Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.

Know what it is the emotional statement to convey, and use taste and judgement to help the actors give their best possible performance.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity--no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.

When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.

The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache. This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.