The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists. Neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.

The hardest thing in making a movie is to keep in the front of your consciousness your original response to the material. Because that's going to be the thing that will make the movie. And the loss of that will break the movie.

I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films.

The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.