A viewer as opposed to a filmmaker might see a film differently. But I'm extremely comfortable with my style.

I can't see any reason why a film shouldn't be stylized and visually beautiful. I don't think a beautiful set is pretentious.

There cannot be any communication except through form. If there is no form, you cannot create emotion in the spectator.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

I never had any special appetite for filmmaking, but you have to make a living and it is miraculous to earn a living working in film.

My films seem to be better understood and better received by the monthly publications. On television the first reactions are usually unfavorable.

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.

For me an unfavorable initial reaction happens fairly often. For some reason the more time that elapses after the film opens, the more favorable the reviews become.

I am never driven. Every film Ive made has been an assignment.

Why, you mean you didn't get abducted and dragged across country purely to make us a story for us to chew over endlessly?" asked Pip, tossing his shock of tow-colored hair indignantly. "The nerve!

We lived in Yorkville until 1940, at which point we moved into the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens.

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's.

On corsets: I said, You have got to be kidding. I am an ape and yet I am still expected to squeeze myself into one of those damn things.

It's not work that kills [people], it is worry.

Without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained.

Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.

Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash--suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious.

Last time I had three or four of those I crapped for three days straight!

Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.