My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.

When you're in the desert, you look into infinity.... It makes you feel terribly small, and also in a strange way, quite big.

Film is a dramatised reality and it is the director's job to make it appear real... an audience should not be conscious of technique.

I think people remember pictures not dialogue. That's why I like pictures.

Good films can be made only by a crew of Dedicated Maniacs.

I rather like mysteries. But I do dislike muddles.

I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.

I'm first and foremost interested in the story, the characters.

Don't make jokes about food.

History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.

I don't own you, you just belong to me.

I can promise you this: If you really, sincerely, genuinely want God back, He hasn't moved. He's still there, just like always, ready to bear-hug you again, just like in the old days.

The nail that sticks out is hammered down.

A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.

Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.

When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever.

I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.

I think girls are surprised when you actually really listen and then you call it back at the end of the night.

Insanity consists of building major structures upon foundations which do not exist.