If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down,….

I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do..

The amazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that it got made at all..

Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film..

One of my favorite movies of all time is 'It's A Wonderful Life', which is a pretty interesting choice for a seasonal Christmas favorite, because it'….

The only person who can, with impunity, make the movie he wants to make, has got to be Steven Spielberg..

I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire..

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls..

I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story..

I am fascinated with times past..

The human race is fundamentally insane. If you put two of us into a room together we're soon gonna start figuring out good reasons to kill one anothe….

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations..

I'm still learning. It's all a learning curve. Every time you sit down, with any given episode of any given show, it is a learning curve. You're lear….

I've never been a big fan of the music-video style of editing movies that crept in the last few decades. I like stuff that's able to take its time..

Stanley Kubrick was a big inspiration. People accuse me of never using my own material. But when did Kubrick? You look at his films and they are comp….

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should..

To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film..

I'd like to think that my films are personal enough to exist without hearkening back to their respective novels..

The Exorcist' is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects..

I think once you've finished a movie you really have to detach from it so that you can come back and watch it as an audience member..