I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

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.

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.

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.

Competition may help us create better products and services but in the end competition really seeks to destroy the opponent. To put him out of the power to compete against you.

Complacency kills. Paranoia is the reason I’m still alive.

I do a lot of reflection. I do. I spend a lot of time in reflection and contemplation. I guess the way the old mystics used to do. I don't do meditation. That's not for me. It's not my thing.

You don't get to decide your part in the school play, but you do get to decide whether or not you play it well.

You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that.

If you're in the movie or in television, your failures are very public, and so are your successes. You weigh them up against each other, really.

I was madder than a midget with a yo-yo

The butterfly went to heaven and became a butterfly necktie.

Many a man's tongue broke his nose.

Of course, when you're training your whole life to get to the Olympics, you train for gold.