It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

I only storyboard scenes that require special effects, where it is necessary to communicate through pictures.

You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.

All the great legends are Templates for human behavior. I would define a myth as a story that has survived.

The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead.

Black and white is much closer to the condition of dreaming. It links you to the subconscious and I think that was part of the great appeal of movies originally.. this strange otherness.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

Movie-making is the process of turning money into light. All they have at the end of the day is images flickering on a wall.

What is passion? Passion is surely the becoming of a person.

Black-and-white gives you that sort of parallel world. Also, it's very close to the condition of dreaming, to the unconscious.

I think most films are too predictable. They follow familiar patterns. I suppose audiences like to know where they stand but I like films that take me by surprise, take unexpected turns and twists.

I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.

I'm attached to my land in Pantelleria as if I'd inherited it. Acting is my job, Pantelleria is my home.

To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones.

The individual problem is the world problem. Therefore let us return to the problem of individual perfection and the establishing of peace in the heart and in the mind of the individual.

Software patents, in particular, are very ripe for abuse. The whole system encourages big corporations getting thousands and thousands of patents. Individuals almost never get them.

Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

Yes, actually ever since I saw his films and tried to write about them, Sirk's been in everything I've done. Not Sirk himself, but what I've learned from his work.

Our way is not soft grass, it's a mountain path with lots of rocks. But it goes upwards, forward, toward the sun.