Sanitised violence in movies has been accepted for years. What seems to upset everybody now is the showing of the consequences of violence.

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines things.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

I don't think that writers or painters or filmmakers function because they have something they particularly want to say. They have something that they feel. And they like the art form; they like words, or the smell of paint, or celluloid and photographic images and working with actors. I don't think that any genuine artist has ever been oriented by some didactic point of view, even if he thought he was.

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

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.