If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

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.

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

My period as a young teenager when you really listen to music so you can get understand a little bit more about what the music is was, say, 1965 to 1968. I was just lucky to be in those times.

It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.

I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.