There's nothing good about getting older-absolutely nothing-because the amount of wisdom and experience you gain is negligible compared to what you lose. You do gain a couple of things-you gain a little bittersweet and sour wisdom from your heartbreaks and failures and things-but what you lose is so catastrophic in every way.

It's important to control yourself because life gets too complicated if you don't, but the impulse is often there for people. Some say society should be more open. That doesn't work either.

My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.

Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.

Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.

To me nature is... spiders and bugs, and big fish eating little fish, and plants eating plans, and animals eating... It's like an enormous restaurant, that's the way I see it.

I myself don't like to speak to the actors at all. I like to hire great people and let them do their thing. I don't like to speak to them. I don't like to have lunch with them. I don't like to socialize with them. I don't like to hear their ideas.