"I have wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox, which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about two percent moviemaking and ninety-eight percent hustling It's no way to spend a life."

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

"The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful."

"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act."

"Every summit scaled was once thought insurmountable from the valley below. Such is the immutable nature of understanding — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will always hurry back."

"The ocean of adversity cannot drown the spirit that resolves to stay afloat. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows."

"Every second given to regret is a precious second stolen from creation. Such is the immutable nature of understanding."