The only person who can, with impunity, make the movie he wants to make, has got to be Steven Spielberg.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.

The Exorcist' is amazing because it recognizes that silences can be as powerful as sound effects.

If you're going to succeed, you've got to be like one of those punch-drunk fighters in the old Warner Bros. boxing pictures: too stupid to fall down, you just keep slugging and stay on your feet.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.

I think a story should take as long to tell as it is appropriate to that particular story.

Some of us have great original ideas and some of us depend on adaptations.

To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film.

Boy, I'd hate to shoot on tape or disc or whatever the hell they're talking about. I love film.

The amazing thing about any movie is not whether it's good, but that it got made at all.

I just tell you what a pleasure it is to get back to the kind of filmmaking I used to be allowed to do.

It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.

A sob caught in my chest. I didn't even know what a gray was, other than a drab color. All I knew was that I was hungry all the time. And I knew, deep down, that it wasn't just for food.

I think as any artist you always want to grow; you always want to get better.

Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.

The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.

At this point, I think I would garner a lot of hate mail if I was now on the cover of Modern Drummer seeing as I'm not a modern drummer anymore.

You can't keep a cool head when you're drowning in love. You just trash around a lot and scream, and wear yourself out.

For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.

Most little children's obsessions are robots and Barbie dolls. My obsession as a kid was the Versace house. I used to save up my pocket money to buy Versus shirts. I was that obsessed!

It is, all in all, a historic error to believe that the master makes the school; the students make it!