The best director is the one you don't see.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

Life would take everything from you eventually. So who would be so stupid to leave someone they loved by choice?

There is some consolation in the fact that even though your dreams don't come true neither do your nightmares.

If we're going to be considered horror filmmakers, we have to prove it not only to ourselves, but to the audience that we can actually make something scary.

The way I see it, if you're going to make an action movie, you've got to make one with John Woo.

I'll always try to go the safest route, but once someone strikes you or puts their hands on you then it's on, at least for me.

The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It's part of America.

Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.

Every picture one paints involves not painting others.

Life - life - let there be life!