I started at the top and worked my way down.

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.

Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.

The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

I have an unfortunate personality.

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.