Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can't celebrate humanity but I'm not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

And that's just what I'm saying. I would never want to be like certain people, who change the way they dress, go out in disguise, wear a big floppy hat and dark shades. I would hate that.

I just wanted silence, not rage, not anger, not going trouble... One simple thing silence!

People die and starve every day, but look on the bright side. Lower population.

I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.

If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Death ends a life. But it doesn't end a relationship.

All men are liars. All women are liars, too.

It is obvious that the bumper sticker question "What would Jesus do?" will not always bring a popular response.

The trouble with this business is the dearth of bad pictures.

Let us kill all lawyers