Don't get obsessed with not liking a movie.

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

You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.

Regret isn't going to get me anywhere. It's like being obsessed with something. It doesn't bring you anywhere.

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.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

I'm a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films.