Movies are a combination of art and mass medium, but television is so single in its purpose-selling-that it operates without that painful, poignant mixture of aspiration and effort and compromise.

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.

The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new

When a picture can't make it on its own, the producers pull in a 'controversial' message - the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby.

What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.

If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it's that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.

Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

You can't live someone else's expectations in life. It's a recipe for disaster.

No revolution without sexual revolution. No sexual revolution without homosexual revolution.

I have no way of knowing what you are going to feel when you look at one of my paintings; I only know what I feel.

Learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes - he didn't go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.

Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things which cannot be shared.

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.

The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.