My childhood wasn't very happy. It's a long, grim story about being a Jew in a small southern town.

When Fred Astaire danced, everything in this world was perfect.

I think of myself as a meat-and-potatoes kind of director.

What we think about Paris is a part of how we feel about it. Our idea of Paris is our idea and we don't know that that's not necessarily the way it really is. It feels so real.

I can still dance a little, yes, but I like singing better. It's more fun.

What we all like in life, I think, is the challenge of making something... that is not easy to do.

Jean-Luc Godard said that cinema is the truth 24 frames a second. I think cinema is lies 24 frames a second.

You know, sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could put music in the picture! That's how it all began.

There was never any point in my life when I wasn't called Mr. Donen. I'm told my first words were, 'Call me Mr. Donen.' But I suspect that's apocryphal. My mother, Mrs. Donen, tended to exaggerate.

I started dancing when I saw Fred Astaire in 'Flying Down to Rio,' at approximately nine years old. Fred Astaire influenced me, more than anything, to be in 'show business.

I don't have too many friends. I have only a few people who I really love.

I heart my job. I get to make things up for a living.

Worlds of my own creation are erected with walls that are within but a few scant paces of each other. The world that God creates for me has no idea what walls are.

Life's a one way road, Don't just stand next to it and wait to get a pick-up back.

The incessant witless repetition of advertisers' moron-fodder has become so much a part of life that, if we are not careful, we forget to be insulted by it.

My summer reading suggestion: Pick a really famous, really long novel.

Bipolar disorder, manic depression, depression, black dog, whatever you want to call it, is inherent in our society. It's a product of stress and in my case over-work.

Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first.

But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal leafiness - the warm odours of flowers and herb came sweet upon the sense.

In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me?

I don't psyche myself up. I psyche myself down. I think clearer when I'm not psyched up.