Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art.

If I can say one thing for my pictures, it is a certain craftsmanship. A thought which has gone into every angle. There is nothing there without an optical reason.

For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty.

Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.

So slowly in my mind formed the idea of melodrama, a form I found to perfection in American pictures. They were naive, they were that something completely different. They were completely Art-less.

You have to think with the heart.

Rock Hudson was not an educated man, but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands.

These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent condition.

My idea at this time, which was slowly developing, was to create a comedie humaine with little people, average people - samples from every period in American life.

The one thing no one can ever take from you is your education…

The revolution in global communications thus forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.

God wisheth none should wreck on a strange shelf: To him man's dearer than to himself.

The point at which society moves towards our views is a point where we are significantly closer to the vegan world that we are all working toward.

When your existence is hell, death must be heaven.

What I want to do, is play music for somebody who believe in me.

When the sun sets beautifully, other beauties rise. Nature is a theatre; when one great player leaves the scene, another great player immediately enters. The play always continues excellently.

There's some are fou o' love divine; There's some are fou o' brandy.

What we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord.

When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to-it leaves nothing