“There cannot be any communication except through form. If there is no form, you cannot create emotion in the spectator.”

I can’t see any reason why a film shouldn’t be stylized and visually beautiful. I don’t think a beautiful set is pretentious.

For some reason the more time that elapses after the film opens, the more favorable the reviews become.

We should all die with a sharp, brusque heart attack. My father was lucky like that.

When I was 12 I made some little films with my friends. I tried to make gangster films, like Fantomas, but I remember being very disappointed with them.

It was repugnant, but it was the only way to communicate.

A viewer as opposed to a filmmaker might see a film differently. But I’m extremely comfortable with my style.

When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me-I still watch silent films.

I saw part of The Singing Detective on TV in New York. I said, Something is going on here.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

My films seem to be better understood and better received by the monthly publications

For me an unfavorable initial reaction happens fairly often.

. On television the first reactions are usually unfavorable.

I don’t think that there is any such thing as an old film; you don’t say, ‘I read an old book by Flaubert,’ or ‘I saw an old play by Moliere.’

They weren’t frightening at all. I’m sure they’d be very funny now.

I never had any special appetite for filmmaking, but you have to make a living and it is miraculous to earn a living working in film.

I am never driven. Every film Ive made has been an assignment.

Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present behind all the arts.

Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

The forms of diseases are many and the healing of them is manifold.

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

Prayer is work. The experiences of many children of God demonstrate that it accomplishes far more than does any other form of work. It is also warfare, for it is one of the weapons in fighting the enemy. However, only prayer in the spirit is genuinely effectual.