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.

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.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

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

God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.

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

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