“I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.”

Adding explanation to the descriptive passages of a screenplay is the most dangerous trap you can fall into.

The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.

Man is a genius when he dreams. Dream what you are capable of. The harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true.

The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something.

Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one.

I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I’ve liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film.

Take me, subtract movies, and you get zero.

They don’t know it, but they’re losing nature. They don’t see that they’re going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.

If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.

By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way.

I like silent pictures and I always have … I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way.

I simply do not like to show my weakness, and I hate to lose, so I am a person who tries hard. That’s all there is to me.

I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good.

Page 61: No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language.

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.

Boxing is limited fighting with a specific rule set. Fighting is true, where you can do anything.

I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word – politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.

I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

But it’s not anything like what we envisioned it to be. It’s almost like there’s too much choice.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics,

It makes you more choosy and also more receptive to absorb anything for 15 seconds.

The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that’s because it’s the best book on anything for the layman.

[Computing] is just a fabulous place for that, because it’s a place where you don’t have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It’s a place where you can still be an artisan.