But then again, you know, the pimp in TAXI DRIVER has this reason, given the environment he was living in.

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation.

That's like asking a cobbler if he's made too many pairs of shoes.

The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding - that existence is a struggle.

I believe every day when I wake up and go to bed and during my dreaming time there's some moment of truth that's in front of me that will always be in front of me until the end of days.

Everything is difficult, and everything worthwhile is difficult. A certain need, a need not unlike Mickey had: to know, to understand, and I had that need to understand and to know.

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.

You're working on being a father, so that is something that when you experience it you'll understand the profundity of wanting to protect something dear to you.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

They have equal weight and you do the same work you'd do if you were playing a dramatic role.

What fascinated me mostly about Mickey Cohen was that he, in his later years, hired someone to help him to comprehend literature, to help him to read better, to understand words better.

You’ve never had someone you love snatched, ” I shot back, annoyed by her ignorance. “Any sense of safety kind of bites it after that. You watch your back because no one else can.

More than half of our history is lost, not because they were not documented, but they had no guardians and protectors.

The thing about the ocean is that the surface won’t always tell you what is going on underneath.

The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.

Laughter brings out the child in all of us.

Society is no more indulgent than was the God of Genesis.

When people ask you to do stuff, it's not your idea anymore, so it's tough to get behind it.

Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody - either by becoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action.

Cats don't need to be possessed; they're evil on their own.

If you can't save your own life, is it even worth saving?