I was never sloppy with other people's money. Only my own. Because I figure, well, you can be.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

Male experience is what patriarchal culture uses to represent human experience, even when it is women who most often live it.

Simplicity is the key to happiness.

In 40 years I have not spent 15 minutes without thinking of Jesus.

I feel that I am doing the minimum amount of damage to other possibilities that may take place in a reader's head.

Mathematics is really an art, not a science.

The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness.

I am, of course, aware that the ultimate solution is the ownership and control of the means of life by the whole of the people; but we are not at that stage of development as yet.

I went to a lot of theatre schools, got a lot of training, did a lot of repertory where you do a different play every night. I took a lot of voice, movement, and acting classes.

Virgil and Horace [were] the severest writers of the severest age.

Math anxiety: an intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 MPH.