Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.

I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic.

I never start editing a film until it's completely shot; I don't edit along the way, ever. When it's finished I come in here [screening room] and we start with reel one, scene one and start editing shot by shot by shot until we're finished.

[An audience conditioned by a lifetime of television-watching is so corrupted that] their standards have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white cells of their brains out!

The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought.

The less I speak to the actors, the better. And I always hire great people, and I don't want to impose my pre-conceived notions on them. They know how to play it.

Have you ever noticed that good people sleep better, but bad people seem to have more fun when they're awake?