Listen, if there's one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it's that I don't know anything about human nature.

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.

Come to think of it, maybe God is a He after all, because only a cruel force would create something this beautiful and make it inaccessible to most people.

It hurts to get things out in the open, but it hurts even more not to.

I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.

What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

History at its best is vicarious experience.

Perhaps they put party loyalty ahead of the welfare of their constituents, are afraid of crossing the president or are as stupid as Mr. Gruber thinks the American people are.

I laugh at mistakes. I laugh at how you recover from mistakes.

Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can gorge them, banish them, abolish them.

Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive - but that was totally subconscious.

We live in age of compromise, but if we stand on the bedrock of God’s truth, we will not bend with the winds of relativism and faithlessness.