I'm more likely to lose my temper on a film set than almost anywhere. Often the level of idiocy is so exalted that it's impossible to comprehend.
In New York in the Forties or Fifties, everybody's in a suit, an overcoat and a hat.
I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.
I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.
We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.
Scary monsters are like Hula Hoops. They come in and out of fashion.
The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.
It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.
People always say life is short. I've never been convinced of that - mine seems to have a tendency to go on and on.
I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things.
I'm not a control maniac.
You can be a mason and build 50 buildings, but it doesn't mean you can design one.
When you do a really good play, the audience and the performers are looking into the same looking glass, the same microscope. And the specimen they are looking at is human life and that's why I do it, that's why I like it.
I think 1973 was the nadir of fashion. When you watch the coverage from that era, you're struck by the astonishing ugliness of the clothes.
I only have two rules for my newly born daughter: she will dress well and never have sex.
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
I don't like things too overstated in the cut or too perfect.
I'm a little bit phobic about stains on my clothes, so I never travel without a little packet of organic stain remover.
Quite often - a lot of the work I had done had been extensively with women. Most especially in the theater, but also quite often in the movies. That has its own delights, and maybe pitfalls too.
I know for a fact that a lot of actors are desperate and unhappy if their careers are not progressing at what they think is the correct rate. They just go crazy if they're not working. I don't feel I'd be that way. You can always get a few people together and put on a play. Maybe not in New York or L.A., but in a lot of other towns, you can.