I'll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call, when my inexperience poked through, when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me. They're a reminder that it's not mutually exclusive to be confident and humble, to be skeptical and eager to learn.

If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.

I like art. It's another way to rebel.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

I'm thrilled to have a completely new audience that I can get from Court TV, without it being my own trial. That was the only other way I would have gotten it.

In the 1960s, if you could save $500, you had enough to move to another city and start a new life.

I want to be in a 'Final Destination' movie.

I've taught in prison; I've counseled people... I've been arrested; I've been to the psychiatrist.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.

Always, European art cinema has been the most threatening and the grimmest and the most transgressive, I think.

Underground, raw movies that come out of nowhere and change everything - they aren't slick-looking. But I have nothing against slick-looking as long as the scripts are funny.

I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.

My dreams have come true. I mean, everything I wanted to happen as a kid has already happened.

My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'

Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'

My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.

In the beginning, my equipment, I would rent them from teamster-types, really. I don't know where they got the cameras - I think from the TV stations. But I don't know if they asked the TV stations.

You have to think of a new way to make something new. And the biggest sin - you can never try too hard. You can never look like you're just trying to shock people, 'cause that's simple. But making people laugh is the hard part.

Putting out compilation records, buying the right to music is incredibly complicated. You have to find the writer of the song and the publisher of the song - not the singer - and make two separate deals.

Science fiction is something I never understood.

If I'm seeing a three-hour foreign film, I don't want to watch it in a bed.

It's still possible to make movies. Not so much on YouTube. On YouTube, you wind up with an advertising career. What movie became infamous and a hit because of YouTube? Maybe there is one. I don't know.

I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that nobody has been willing to buy.

I was creating characters early. People didn't beat me up. I scared them. I hated authority. I could also get people to do things; I was quite the early director. I could make people laugh enough to get their defences down - and then brainwash them.