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

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

The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.

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.

How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: 'The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.' This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don't want this to happen to 2001.

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.

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