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.

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.

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.

My idea at this time, which was slowly developing, was to create a comedie humaine with little people, average people - samples from every period in American life.

Look upon the world with wonder.

I haven't believed in magic because I don't believe in anything that I haven't seen with my own eyes. Therefore, I must go to Paelsia as soon as I can and learn the truth for myself

I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.

Selfless giving has a lot to do with what happens to you in the future. There is karma, both good and bad.

My advice to graduates is to stay positive. Life is short, and you'll be dead soon.

We hide so well. This is the bottom line: how hidden is male subjectivity? Name five books where male subjectivity is produced in an honest way.

It is only when we understand the transcendence of God that we see how amazing his immanence is, and what a huge privilege it is to be able to enjoy God's intimate friendship.

Six percent, 5 percent of our GDP for him [Vladimir Putin] to match us, he has to spend 25 percent of his GDP and it will bankrupt his country.

Playing music is such a great way to bring people together.

That's all a writer has to write about - what he sees and hears and what not.