I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

The Exorcist' is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects.

If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.

Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film.

The amazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that it got made at all.

I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do.

I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels.

The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements - as well as one's deepest failures - is a definite symptom of maturity.

I think you can make good things happen if you look for them. Life is a very positive thing.

I always loved that old song Banks of the Ohio - it was always such a man's song, so I've always wanted to record it.

Sports are never just sports, we all know that. You're always carrying the flag in some way, shape or form.

I write, not for children,but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

Do good. Inspire. Set an example to yourself and others. Have faith. Make your actions loud. Have fun. Be nice. Love strong.

The time may come when not offering this substantially more effective nutritional approach will be considered malpractice.

Yet if we are to live fully, we must love as though we've never been hurt, dream as though our hopes have never been dashed, and take steps toward the future as though life has never given us pain.

Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm.