The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.

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

It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.

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.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.

You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They're admired and hero-worshipped but there is always present underlying desire to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.