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

"I would rather be on the set than doing anything."

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

"I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world."

"I prefer the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford."

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

"It isn't worth it. No money is worth this... [walks out]"

"You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful."

"A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens."

"The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib. So it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age."

"Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things."

"A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents."

"In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one."

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

"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 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."

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

"Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy."

"Crooks aren't the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world."

"I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody."

"I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing birdcage trick and the theater matinee - may he rot and perish. Good afternoon."

"A movie in production is the greatest train set a boy could ever have."

"I'd make my promises now if I wasn't so busy arranging to keep them."

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