If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.

Everything has changed, but the process of telling a story has not changed. It's like cavemen sitting around the fire; somebody's going to tell the story. Somebody is drawing on the wall. You're communicating. You're trying to learn and teach at the same time. You're your own student and you're your own teacher, but the process is of the communicating.

I've never laid a cane on the back of a lord before, but if you force me to I shall speedily become used to the practice.

If Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda had a baby, it would be Matthew Modine.

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