I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.

All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.

I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air.

So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.

You can't make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else.

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I'd go, 'Okay, I'll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.' Really. But I've made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?