“Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.”

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It’s the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.

I’ve spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I’m not irresponsible.

The Godfather’ was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they’re talking.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.

I’m one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour – and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered.

The most personal thing I’ve put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It’s better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

I said “I’ve had pho,” and then he goes, “Oh, what do you get, the number one big bowl?” I was like, “Come on, man

Just the slightest turn toward the inside is a very big thing.

We’re all waiting for the opportunity to do big films but you have to wait your turn – unless you get offered something like Twilight when you’re 20! Otherwise, you just have to keep slogging away.

I hope baseball doesn’t get to the point where everyone’s saying, ‘He takes it [steroids]. He takes it. He takes it!’ because not all of us do. I’ve been big my whole life, and I’ll always be big. That’s all natural.

I find auditioning to be a very illusive process, where actors come in with this really big result with no process, so it’s a lie already at work.

The big secret about Art is that no one wants it to be true.

People always – when you rise, whenever you’re getting to a point where you’re a very big band, which is a very rare thing, there are always going to be people that aren’t going to like you.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know.