A director in Hollywood in my time couldn't do what he wanted to do.

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.

If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.

For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty.

Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.

You have to think with the heart.

Rock Hudson was not an educated man, but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands.

These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent condition.

History provides a great example but a terrible excuse.

To understand the language of love and peace, listen to the silence.

In our own way, in your own way, we are all of us a masterpiece. Everyone is unique.

When you live in a leading lady's body, which I do, you have to constantly prove that you are funny.

Curiosity is one of the many masks of love.

The Declaration of Independence has established certain moral confines, and governs in a manner consistent with the spirit under which our nation was founded: Love God; love thy neighbor as thyself.

The best propaganda omits rather than invents

I turned from my wicked ways and embraced Jesus. The next thing I knew, good times had come my way.

The Lower City is MINE, Its People are MINE. If I Find Them That's Doing All This Kidnapping And Murdering, They'd Best Pray For Mercy, Because Once I Get My Teeth In 'Em I Will NEVER Let Them Go.

I will live a hope-filled life every day. I will handle my problems as opportunities in a different, more effective manner, based on the power of advanced mathematics; "You + God = Enough