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.

The hardest thing in making a movie is to keep in the front of your consciousness your original response to the material. Because that's going to be the thing that will make the movie. And the loss of that will break the movie.

The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.

One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

No philosophy based on an incorrect view of the nature of man is likely to produce social good.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble