New York was the only really hostile city. Perhaps there is a certain element of the lumpen literati that is so dogmatically atheist and materialist and Earth-bound that it finds the grandeur of space and the myriad mysteries of cosmic intelligence anathema.

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity--no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.

I didn't want murder. It's all gone wrong.

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.

The director's job is to know what emotional statement he wants a character to convey in his scene or his line, and to exercise taste and judgment in helping the actor give his best possible performance.

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

I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any traditional, anthromorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe.