Art consists of reshaping life but it does not create life, nor cause life.

How does anybody ever think of anything?

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.

One does not have to make Frank Capra movies to like people.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.

Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.