Clive [Oppenheimer] and I figured out that I'm the only one probably in the film industry who is clinically sane. I say that as a joke, but there's a grain of truth to it. I'm not a stupid daredevil who jumps into the crater of the volcano to get the closest close-up, I'm not one of those. And you have to be aware that you have a crew with you and you are responsible.

Nature is monumentally indifferent.

If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it's simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it's a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

The punishment itself is something I respectfully disagree with, but for thousands and thousands of years it was practiced everywhere.

You have to be completely open to what people would tell you. You do not shape them; you do not force the materials into your ideas. You have to have all windows and doors open.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.