Quote collection
355 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I guess it's like trying to put through the flat tax, which is probably my favorite one of all.... if we did pass it, all of a sudden, what do you have? You have the whole tax system run by a little old lady on a home computer, doing the work of all these thousands of bureaucrats and accountants. Passing that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"
"If somebody's dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they're gonna have to take what they get."
"You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director."
"If a person doesn't change, there's something really wrong with him."
"I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me."
"When I used to be a contract player in 1954 at Universal, I wasn't getting good roles. I was getting one-liners, and then I'd be gone. But I'd hang around; I'd watch guys. And when I had days off, which was most days, I'd go down and watch other sets while they were shooting. Watch Joan Crawford or whomever. Just watch how they worked and how the director handled them. I didn't know anything about making movies, and there's a lot to learn."
"You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about."
"Casting a film is to me one of the most important things next to the writing. If you cast it properly everything takes place very easily. If you cast it improperly you're fighting an uphill battle."
"I like the inspiration of the first take."
"I've done a few special effects movies in my life, so I've gotten that out of my system."
"A talented executive would be somebody who knows how to surround themselves with a lot of people that will make him look good. You could say that about a politician or you could say that about a head of a major corporation or what have you. The people you surround yourself with it's very important."
"None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn't take much for them to turn a profit. We don't deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don't waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it's because no one cares. We care."
"Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days."
"When I see a story, I ask: is this something I'd like to be in? Is this something I'd like to see? And if I'd like to see it, would I like to tell it?"
"Every movie I make teaches me something. That's why I keep making them."
"I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote."
"If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it's an art form or whether it's just in life, it comes off---you don't have anything to prove; you can just be who you are."
"You know when you're young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they're trying to be old men and they have no idea what that's like? It's just that stupid the other way around."
"Everybody is looking for a reason to not to take responsibility for their own actions in hand."
"Hillary Clinton has made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician. I'm sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician."