The good ideas will survive.

My parents said, Oh, he's going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

To me, Godard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music: they both revolutionized their forms.

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.

I laugh all the time. I'm an easy laugher. You can find me on any set, because I'm always laughing.

To me, torture would be watching sports on television.

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them - thus preserving the system.

When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.

Violence in real life is terrible; violence in movies can be cool. It's just another colour to work with.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'

Don't write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what's in your heart.

But time has caught up with it and I think vindicated it. Shampoo, too: very dark, very ambitious movie.

Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water.

I'm not supposed to be the one that's caught with his pants down.

But, uh, censorship at that time said that you just absolutely couldn't do anything involving children and so we had to go from there. I don't remember what I changed it to. Duvall is just excellent in it.

Larry Grobel senses there are no answers in life, only questions. Good ones.