'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Once you have a situation that is fresh, then you sort of believe in it and it becomes normal. So you do end up with protagonists that haven't been in other movies before.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.

Obscurity makes success undefined because success is crowned by sharing what you have with people who need it

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

I like the South because of the people. They are loyal. Once they love a team, they're fans forever.

The Internet challenges traditional ways of distributing and processing information and so encourages new standards and behavior.

The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

Spiritual education is not a distinct and separate discipline; it is part and parcel of all types and levels of education, In fact, it is the very foundation on which a lasting edifice can be built.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.