“The best way to truly understand narrative art is to experience it.”

It’s not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It’s how well can you make it under the circumstance, because there’s always circumstances. You cannot use that as an excuse.

Someday you’re going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.

The one way the world hasn’t changed: teaching is still the most important job.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences – is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

Education is the single most important job of the human race.

The older you get, the less seriously you take criticism. I’ve gotten to a point now where I ignore it completely. It’s just not relevant to me anymore.

From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Any society begins by realizing that together, by helping each other, you can survive better than if you fight each other and compete with each other.

Good luck has its storms.

I am simply trying to struggle through life trying to do God’s bidding.

Part of the reason my friends and I became successful is that we were always helping each other.

A movie is never finished, only abandoned.

My life is making movies. I like storytelling, and I’ve got a lot of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before my time is up.

It’s okay to lose; just don’t lose the lesson.

There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason.

There’s no art where there’s no fee.

Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government.

The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Art to me is a question mark.

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.

When you’re young and everything dramatic is exciting, you start to believe that hype that, in order to be an artist, you have to suffer. I’ve graduated from that school.

You don’t know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It’s all in the practice.

Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.