A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

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.

Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better.

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

If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.

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

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.