I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable..

The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bo….

I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one..

The only safe thing in filmmaking is to take a chance..

If you want to be a legend, God help you, it's so easy. You just do one thing. You can be the master of suspense, say. But if you want to be as invis….

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies..

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein..

Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth..

Will we allow the decline of our language-the language of Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of communication? Will we ….

It's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself, and then when you do, it's a catastrophe. I mean, the people I know who like themselves - I don't w….

The unconscious is our best collaborator..

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition..

A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't..

Yes. The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny..

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love..

Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still o….

Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report, There….

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when ….

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw..

No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence: Two tanker trucks has ….

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it..