In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

You just never know when you're living in a golden age.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.

To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.

A person with the best strategy never gets angry.

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.

If I had never met him I would have dreamed him into being.

The British are so incestuous. They pass around partners like they're passing popcorn at a movie.

Oh, I'm so glad we know what it's called, that's a great help," snarled Ron, leaning back, trying to stop the plant from curling around his neck.

I had twins, so it was really uncomfortable [to sleep], because you lay on one side, and there's a baby, and you lay on the other side and there's a baby. So I had a really hard time with it.

Yes, but I did manage to increase the amount of virginity in the world by that method.

Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti- communism already has.

Friendship reaches well above all currency.