In terms of popular cinema, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is as near perfection as I can think of.

The films that I really enjoy now are films that are made by, for wont of a better word, mavericks.

There are some people who walk into a room and they oxygenate it, by their very being there's fresh air. Then there are those who come in with the smell of death and they suck the life out.

Filmmaking is something I have to do. It's not something I particularly want to do.

You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you.

I know virtually no one of my age who can remember a hug, or a smile from their father, or a 'Let's go play football.'

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd.

I find the world more absurd now than I did when I was a kid.

I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

Stop trying to be a magician. The past won’t come back. It likes its safety in memory.

Hollow slogans like "Making your country great again" only lead to one result, collapse.

After a battle is over people talk a lot about how decisions were methodically reached but actually there's always a hell of a lot of groping around.

If I were white I could capture the world.

The Devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant.

If you see there is no meaning to anything that you are doing, your ego collapses; so you are trying to find all kinds of fake meanings.

To teach successfully we must tell all we know, but only what is adaptable to the student.

I miss sunrise even more. The green scent of dawn in the forest? The color blushing back into the world, different every day.

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich.

Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.