If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.

I am an American Jew and aware of the sensitivities involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The greatest films ever made in our history were cut on film, and I'm tenaciously hanging on to the process. I just love going into an editing room and smelling the photochemistry and seeing my editor wearing mini-strands of film around his neck.

I had to get over my fear of running through the world naked and learn to say 'take me or leave me.'

I've been shooting movies and television shows for now 47 years and I've worked with the best of them and [Kirk Douglas] is the only movie star I ever met.

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.

I've always sort of time-locked and mind-blocked myself in my 30s, and that's always the age I feel.