I have a great admiration for English actors and actresses and have used them at every opportunity over the years, but now I won't have to import them to New York.

You make films whether they're dramas or comedies about neurotic people. Flawed people. Interesting personality traits. To make them about calm, stable untroubled people isn't interesting.

Human existence is a brutal experience to me... it's a brutal, meaningless experience - an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, terrible experience, and so it salvation is what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most.

Marriage is like mushrooms: we notice too late if they are good or bad.

When you make the film, it's like a chef who works on the meal. After you're working all day in the kitchen and dicing and cutting and putting the sauces on, you don't want to eat it. That's how I always feel about the films. I work on it for a year. I've written it, I've worked with the actors, I've edited, put the music in. I just never want to see it again.

Those modern analysts, they charge so much! In my day, for five marks Freud himself would treat you. For ten marks he would treat you and press your pants. For fifteen marks Freud would let you treat him - that included a choice of any two vegetables.

Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz.