Akira Kurosawa is the pictorial William Shakespeare of our time.

A lot of the films I've made probably could have worked just as well 50 years ago, and that's just because I have a lot of old-fashion values.

Making a movie is like a stagecoach ride through the Old West: at first you wish for a pleasant trip, and after a while you just hope you reach your destination.

I make some movies for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine that I'm an audience member. I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience. There are other types of genre films that I need to be able to direct from the audience, to be right next to you watching the picture being made.

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.

He never gave up. And he does that for us

If the world ran the way a crew runs a set, we'd have a better, more progressive world.