You'd be surprised how many movie stars still care about the work.

When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.' .

As a filmmaker, "no" is not in my vocabulary. I've got to figure out a way.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

This devil loves mankind because men are going to always make the choice that will send him into ascendancy. He's been winning the game for a long time.

The score is always the wonderful icing. The score tells you the emotional content of the film. What the characters don't say, the music can say.