Contentment gives a crown, where fortune hath denied it.

You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart.

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.

I am... a mushroom; On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.

I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.

I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism.

When in doubt, make a western.

Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry?

Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.

To be quite blunt, I make pictures for money, to pay the rent.There are some great artists in the business. I am not one of them.

Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters.

The scientist is more religious than the poet because his beliefs rests in faith for a reality that is intangible.

the romance of solitude and small places, the blurring of identity.

For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.

The Obama-Clinton administration tried repeatedly to remove our cruisers from service, then refused to modernize these very old, aging, aging ships. They're old. They're tired.

I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author.

You have to decide what's important to you and work it out. When I'm with my family, I try to concentrate on my family and when I'm at work, I try to concentrate on my work.

The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement.

The mind is sicker than the sick body; in contemplation of its sufferings it becomes hopeless. [Lat., Corpore sed mens est aegro magis aegra; malique In circumspectu stat sine fine sui.]

I found that most people who buy restaurants should never have done it, because they don't understand money.