“Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.”

I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.

My weaknesses… I wish I could come up with something.

If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I’m in it, whatever that means.

My movies are always being played on television, I’m very well known and all that stuff.

When you’re reading some of the great plays, when you do what I call “taking up with a writer,” something happens.

I’m not a violent person, never was, but I have this temperament that I’ve always displayed.

I never saw myself as a director. It’s certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

[Marlon] Brando’s a giant on every level. When he acts it’s as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.

I don’t need bodyguards. I’m from the South Bronx.

If something is working, don’t fix it. Keep going. Go with the glow.

Or try out what I learned and see how it worked with an audience, because where are you gonna get an audience?

I’m always on a red carpet . . . the other day I thought, this ain’t bad. You can meet people on it.

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I’m going to do than the movies.

I don’t care if it’s a walk in the park, a look out the window, a good bubble bath – whatever. Even a meal you like, or a friend you want to call. That helps us solve all this stuff in our head.

Larry Grobel has the illness of all writers, he can’t help himself.

I just wondered how it would feel, how people would treat her, but she’s adjusted so marvelously.