It's a passion when you're doing it for other people and you're doing it for the people around you making the film and the people who are going to see the film, and the giving. When you start thinking about you doing it for some sort of self-gain, then I think it becomes an obsession. It becomes a negative experience.

Don't do anything. Just tolerate me and let me suffer, knowing how you feel.

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.

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

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

Never say no to an idea - you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.

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