In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night.

Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

I never said I was a genius.

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.

I don't like television when it gets near to photographed plays.

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly convinced that that's a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

There were centuries when civilization had no theater.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers.

I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible.

I think I made essential a mistake in staying in movies, because I - but it's a mistake I can't regret, because it's like saying, 'I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman, but I did because I love her.'

The first thing one must remember about film is that it is a young medium. And it is essential for every responsible artist to cultivate the ground that has been left fallow.

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, 'cause it was lawless. A man's word had to mean something.

If I don't like somebody's looks, I don't like them.

I would rather be on the set than doing anything.

I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.

Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to create product to fill their screen, and the amount of good product is limited.

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.

I have no great message to the world.

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.

When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

I'm never certain of a performance - my own or the other actors' - or the script or anything... But to me it seems there's only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

I'm one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour - and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I've never heard one say, 'No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.' They will always say, 'You don't like him? I've got somebody else.' They're totally spineless.

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.