Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.

When I first started, there were writers that I looked up to that I felt very influenced by and very respectful toward their work and their opinion of my work.

Sometimes the critics will like a film, and the public doesn't come. Sometimes the critics won't like the film, and the public will come. It's completely spontaneous. It's a hazard.

I'd like to make a great movie. I've made many movies. I think I've made some good movies, but I never felt I've made a great movie.

During the course of the year a number of ideas just come up automatically. I could be walking down the street. Or shaving. An idea will hit me and I'll write it down. Then, when I'm ready to write, I check my little matchbooks and napkins and find that it is good or it's pretty terrible. There are other times when I don't have any ideas and I'll go into a room and close the door and I sit and sweat it out for a day or a month and eventually I come up with [something].

You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life

These were always obsessions of mine, even as a very young child. These were things that interested me as the years went on. My friends were more preoccupied with social issues - issues such as abortion, racial discrimination, and Communism - and those issues just never caught my interest. Of course they mattered to me as a citizen to some degree...but they never really caught my attention artistically.