Television represents what happens to a medium when the artists have no power and the businessmen are in full, unquestioned control.

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.

I think laughter may be a form of courage.... As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.

All translation is a compromise - the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

We're all generous, but with different things, like time, money, talent - criticism.

Remember, cobbler, to keep to your leather.

Kings are falling like leaves this autumn.

There's nothing wrong with being a large mammal.

From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.

The true Amphitryon is the Amphitryon where we dine.

Abuse is an indirect species of homage.