Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.
The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.
Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.
I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising.
There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
The truth about any man can only be calculated by the sum of everything that has been said about him.
What's happening now is what happened before, and often what's going to happen again sometime or other
The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can.
Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.
Working is part of life, I don't know how to distinguish between the two... Work is an expression of life.
I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.
There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze.
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.
Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus-number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.
The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.
I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it.
The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.
A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.
Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
Why spend 18 hours watching someone else's war, when you know how it comes out? We win, and then have to buy all their cars.
I'm one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour - and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.
I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician.
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It's the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.
If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.
I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.
Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat.
I look back on my life and it’s 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them. It’s no way to live.
I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.
Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don't make money, you're to blame. Your job is to make money.
One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.
If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.
Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things.
A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.
I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows.
Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.
It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations.
I hate women, hate them generally, not in particular but in an abstract way. I hate them because one never really learns anything about them. They are inscrutable.
I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom. I mark only the happy hours, like the sundial, because otherwise I would have gone nuts.