I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

I was born in 1942, so I was mainly aware of Howard Hughes' name on RKO Radio Pictures.

I'm very phobic about flying, but I'm also drawn to it.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

What the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He wanted to stay, but staying would have meant the total destruction of Tibet, because he would have died and that would have ripped the heart out of his people.

It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods.

I love the look of planes and the idea of how a plane flies. The more I learn about it the better I feel; while I still may not like it, I have a sense of what is really happening.

I'm going to be 60, and I'm almost used to myself.

I don't agree with everything he did in his life, but we're dealing with this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.

I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.

Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.

It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.

If it's a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the structure of the script.

And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.

More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.

I always say that I've been in a bad mood for maybe 35 years now. I try to lighten it up, but that's what comes out when you get me on camera.

Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.

I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.

I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.

I think what happened there was just the budget would be too big to build these sets because nothing really exists here in New York of that period; you have to build it all.

The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.

Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

As you grow older, you change.

Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again.

Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.

Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.

Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.

I always wanted to make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the beginning.

I didn't realize there are generations who do not know about the origins of film.

I don't like being in houses alone.

I don't really see many people... don't really go anywhere either.

I don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.

I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.