“I don’t feel out of place. I think of earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is and the would be put an end to it.”

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given.

The great appeal of film is its relatability.

Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.

A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.

It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work.

One of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted.

I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

Only through sheer ambition did I end up playing on [Bob Dylan sessions] and the fact that I could do that is a testament to how disorganized it really was.

At the end of the day, you can have all the talent in the world. But if you don’t put in the work, nothing works. The engine doesn’t start going. It’s a car without gas.

Having an actual income can expand your romantic horizons toward the more appealing end of the spectrum.

My dad didn’t graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year.

in their nerve ends, not the facts of life but the facts of death and violence: absurd, random, gratuitous, unjustified, and inescapably part of the society we have created.

There is never any end, There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state.

You put different combinations in the mix and it becomes something unique in the end.

You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.