“You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.”

It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along the street. How can I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.

One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.

After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano.

The best director is the one you don’t see.

She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you’re really in the presence of something. In that league there’s only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It’s a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you’ve found it.

Well, nobody’s perfect.

I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.

We’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.

I’m delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we’ve got something to look down on.

You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.

I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.

I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.

Many people are being persuaded that they cannot be considered intelligent or well educated if they insist on the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Book.

I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.

I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.

For a painter, the Mecca of the world for study, for inspiration, and for living is here on this star called Paris.

It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.

The bible is not a blueprint for every day of your life, it is an inspiration not a blueprint.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven.

Inspiration is not inside of us. Inspiration comes from outside. It comes from our spiritual guides and from different energies that are in the universe.