I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I'll get money again.

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can't celebrate humanity but I'm not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

And that's just what I'm saying. I would never want to be like certain people, who change the way they dress, go out in disguise, wear a big floppy hat and dark shades. I would hate that.

Never close your hands in the face of evil fate

First, forgive. Second, forget by choosing not to dwell on that which is forgiven and in the past. We have no right to keep in front of us what God has put behind Him.

You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across, not just to depict life, or criticize it, but to actually make it alive.

Small groups of people can have a really huge impact.

If there were no contradictions and no struggle, there would be no world, no process, no life, and there would be nothing at all.

Legal and illegal activities had become inextricably intertwined.

How long do you want to wait until you start enjoying life? When you're sixty-five you get social security.

When I learned to forgive, it was like a million pounds were lifted from me.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

I try not to read the Internet because it's mostly just a sea of hatred.