Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

No, you're either born a writer, a storyteller, or you're not.

I became a loner. I became a mountain man. A lot of those things are very good qualities and they help you do your work, help you be singular and keep the artistic integrity of your work intact, but they don't make it very easy to live your life.

I've always been able to survive by writing, though.

There is a certain kind of respect for authenticity today that there wasn't back in the days when they did 'Cleopatra,' where everything looked like a giant motel. People want to have it be authentic in the look, and authentic in the way people behave.

I find that screenwriting is at best kind of a hackwork in some ways.

I've always had trouble with authority.

Yeah, I think that's it... It's like Jesse James. He became really popular because he lasted so long. You know, there is some degree of truth to the fact that time will dignify anything, too.

Most artists think they're frauds anyway.

Egotism is not a good quality. It's not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn't be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn't be tolerated in a movie director.

Yeah, there's absolutely. I mean, remember when The Searchers came out, it was a relatively big hit for a Western, and I think it made 5 million bucks - I don't even think it made that.

I felt that the Star Wars series became very pretentious as time went on. Just heavy and leaden.

I suppose when I started out I would have liked to have been the darling of critics or something, but everybody wants to be loved and admired.

I think Francis at half form is better than anybody else by 50%, you know? I think it's just that he has never... he has a late pick of the things that are ambitious enough for him.

You never know when you're going to be considered un-hip... The people that really pass judgment on you really have nothing to do with what you do, usually.

Everybody's a filmmaker today.

Most of the good executives do pretty well. Because to be a good executive you have to be strong, and you have to have a simple attribute that people have forgotten about - courage.

Writing requires a great deal of skill, just like painting does. People don't want to learn those skills.

I hardly said a word to my wife until I said 'yes' to divorce.

Also, they don't understand - writing is language. The use of language. The language to create image, the language to create drama. It requires a skill of learning how to use language.

'm a general, I do something. I go out and fight wars and win them.

A lot of directors don't know what they want to do. Every director I've seen that was a good director that I've admired knew exactly what he wanted to do. They didn't sit there and think about it.

Matter of fact, the style that people use today, I invented in a way.

I also thought of myself as the Sonny Barger of the film industry.

A lot of people thought of me as a threat to Western civilization.

You know, I find it very strange when movies that I made that were just excoriated - I mean that I was just vilified for - are now looked at as classics.

The filmmakers always have a great level of control.

Films are always pretentious. There's nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

I suppose when I started out I would have liked to have been the darling of critics or something but everybody wants to be loved and admired.

Films are always pretentious. Theres nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

I did radio back in the era when we did radio drama.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

I had an amazing experience working with great people. I had a great family, a typical family with drama in certain areas, and that's pretty much everywhere in everyone's life.

Comedy is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

I was always a drama queen. I remember playing in the kitchen, trying to get my mom to think I was dead and call the police. When she didn't, I would cry. I was always theatrical. I don't think any of my relatives are surprised.

You have to go to the ultimate situation in drama.

Any long work in which poetry is persistent, be it epic or drama or narrative, is really a succession of separate poetic experiences governed into a related whole by an energy distinct from that which evoked them.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.

For me, football is just a game, not a drama.

The more commercial work that is happening, the more people are operating cameras and are setting up studio lights, the greater the opportunity for drama production to happen.

I'm doing music, and we both want to do some drama.

Culture clash is terrific drama.

I want to do drama, light comedy, the whole range.

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.

I always feel like an interloper when I do serious drama. It's my own paranoia.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

When the time came to make a decision about what do in life, I found myself thinking that acting was the thing I loved to do, so I applied to drama school. And then, I didn't get in - twice.