I feel lucky to be in whatever I'm in. I feel lucky to be working.

The ability to have a choice in what you do is a privilege.

There's only a handful of people I trust completely, and I know who they are. Other than that, I pretty much don't trust people.

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium.

I think its important for movies to recognize that they are part of a history of movies. I also think that most movies are about movies anyway, even if they're about something else.

One of my favorite vampire movies is 'Nosferatu,' which has a palpable sense of dread that's a pre-war dread.

I prefer when movies target my heart instead of my mind.

I've been really interested in focusing on the aspects of my Russian heritage I'm proud of. I'm actually em­barrassed to tell people I'm Russian, because it's become such an awful place.

I think you can always find interesting, complex and fascinating characters to play in different kinds of movies. It's in your hands.

Maybe silence is something we're uncomfortable with as a culture, I don't know.

I've been lucky to be able to work with great people and on interesting material.

The wealthy don't have any sense of humor. It's not like the English, where the theater is perhaps the one place where they have a sense of humor about themselves.

I'm willing to make compromises based on someone I think is the one, but I think it's psychologically important to people when they're famous to be the only famous person they know.

I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.

Smokey and the Bandit was the first picture [Hal Needham ] directed, and I knew he could handle it. I had just directed Gator, and he saw my style and used that as a pattern.

Well, there doesn't seem anything else for an ex-President to do but to go into the country and raise big pumpkins.

All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy.

[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

Faith enables many of us to endure life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.

Tell the world you are a one-of-a-kind creation who came here to experience wonder and spread joy. Expect to be accommodated.