It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.

The best I can do is to make a film every two years.

As you grow older, you change.

I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.

I've always liked 3D.

I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.

I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.

Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.

I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.

There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.

The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.

There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.

I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.

I've seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.

If it's a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the structure of the script.

I'm very phobic about flying, but I'm also drawn to it.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.