I realized I probably wouldn't make another film that cuts through commercial and creative things like 'Godfather' or 'Apocalypse.'

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

And a moment that ought to have lasted for everHas come and gone before I knew.

Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through of getting to the other side the relief of a conflict healed the clarity when a paradox dissolves.

I'd rather be lucky than good.

By the time I got there, you’d already decided. And I quickly decided to let you decide. You were already seeing the rooms as ours, and that was enough for me.

War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, 'I was just following orders.'

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome.

Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.

It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.

Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems.

True depth of understanding is wide and steady, Shallow understanding is lazy and wandering, Words of wisdom are precise and clear