You know, essentially when you do a play you're reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That's not what happens with a movie.

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

I'm not going to be an interpreter at the U.N. I'm not going to live in Africa on a farm or whatever, but I am going to see the world through those eyes when I make those films.

When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.

I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push. People talk about Three Days of the Condor as being anti-government but the last statement in that movie is the CIA guy saying to Robert Redford, "Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"

I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups.