“The picture’s over. Now I have to go and put it on film.”

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s somebody nobody knows about.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.

I can’t read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

Reality is something that none of us can stand, at any time.

A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn’t want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing.

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book – it makes a very poor doorstop.

One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.

To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.

Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn’t have to cope with the actors and all the rest.

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Claude Jade is a brave nice young lady. But I don’t give any guarantee what she will do on a taxi’s back seat.

If I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right.

Everything has a beginning and an ending. Make peace with that and all will be well…In life we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.

A good thing never ends.

There is no limit to what the Lord can do in and with and through any individual or any married couple who surrender themselves and their resources completely to His will and His way.

It could be the end of a story. It could be the beginning.

Sometimes a “mistake” can end up being the best decision you ever make