“When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.”

“All cities do face similar, significant trends in the future... most importantly global warming and climate change.”

“Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.”

“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.”

“the model for the U.S. Constitution was not ancient Greece but the Iroquois Confederacy. Then,” 

“As with all inferior things, this part of the city was given an adjective while the rest stole the noun.” 

“The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.”

“punished people sometimes pass punishment downward, especially to members of their own devalued group.” 

“The earth has its music for those who will listen.”

“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”

“Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.” 

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

I never start editing a film until it's completely shot; I don't edit along the way, ever. When it's finished I come in here [screening room] and we start with reel one, scene one and start editing shot by shot by shot until we're finished.

New York is my home and I have a particular fondness for it. I think it's a place where you can generate any kind of story wonderfully. But I also would be very happy to make a film in Paris or Rome.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

My films are a form of psychoanalysis, except that it is I who am paid, which changes everything.

Film is more of novelty, because I've done so much theater over many years. I'm in love with making movies. Also, I find it easier to remember three minutes of dialogue than three hours.

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.