Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

I still think like a critic, and I still analyze films like a critic. However, it's not possible to write criticism if you're making films.

Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.

As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

I was raised as a Calvinist, which is doctrine-driven. And though there are many things wrong with Calvinism, you are at least encouraged to argue about things.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

People who act against their own best interests are interesting characters.

The only economic paradigm that movies have ever known is capitalism. There were no church sponsors or state patronage. The idea was that if you'd pay to see it, we'll make it for you.

Look whos here big mouth. Now the whole neighborhood will know.

The clock is impotent mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present.

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

A woman should be an illusion.

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.

It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alone. And anything in between that can give us the illusion that we're not, we cling to.'

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it.

They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion.

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction.

If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don't blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.

Being a famous actress may give you a sense of being important, but believe me, it's just an illusion.

The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion.

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion.

I was well traveled, and I created this illusion of literacy through reading and writing. I wrote a book of short stories.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.

The occupation and robbery of a nation occurs under the illusion of freeing its citizens from brutal oppression.

The world is real. Consciousness is the illusion.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

If on the one side we do not harbor the illusion that the entire proletariat must be enlightened before it can be called into battle, so on the other we do not doubt that as much enlightenment as possible must be produced with oral and printed agitation.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.