What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.

It's a mistake to confuse pity with love.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

What do you take me for? A fourteen karat sucker?

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me.

You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

Any time you take a chance you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a million dollar job.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

Among a great many other things that chess teaches you is to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good. It trains you to think before grabbing and to think just as objectively when you're in trouble.

Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life nor cause life.

I am afraid of aeroplanes. I've been able to avoid flying for some time, but I suppose, if I had to, I would. Perhaps it's a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. At one time, I had a pilot's licence and 160 hours of solo time on single-engine light aircraft. Unfortunately, all that seemed to do was make me mistrust large aeroplanes.

I read. I order books from the States. I literally go into bookstores, close my eyes, and take things off the shelf. If I don't like the book after a bit, I don't finish it. But I like to be surprised.

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car.

When you're making a film, you have to make most of your decisions on the run, and there is a tendency to always shoot from the hip.

Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography. Editing is unique to film. You can see something from different points of view almost simultaneously, and it creates a new experience.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent.

Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own Light.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent.

I think 'Y&R's future is contingent upon the ratings. Obviously, none of the soaps are kept alive for the sake of loyalty. It's all about ratings. It's show business. Period.

Illness or pain is just an extension of negative emotion. When you are no longer feeling any resistance to it, it's a non-issue.

I have a lot of stands on a lot of political issues. I'm very big on campaign finance reform. I still think most Americans aren't aware of how the dumping of big corporate dollars and private donor dollars has totally corrupted the political system and taken it away from them.

Many researchers have joined the field and applied the LED to many new markets such as mobile phone screens, LED TV, and LED Lighting.

A financial institution has the task of taking risks, and if it's a well run institution - say, Goldman Sachs - it tries to cover the potential losses to itself, but only to itself.

I think any filmmaker looks back and thinks, 'Boy, if we only had four hours more on that day when the sun was going down,' or, 'If we only spent more time and went back.'

I didn't realize Boston was so easy to get around. In my head, I imagined Boston being this really sprawling city.

The American preoccupation with the law, which is certainly not past, was at its zenith in 1995. The 1980s, the late 1980s, had sort of begun to percolate up to public consciousness this enormous interest in the law.

We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally.

The solution to voters potentially being misled by a judicial candidate's political speech is more speech - not government censorship.

I was very happy being a secretary. I loved working for the government. I was very happy with my life.

My advice to singers is always the same: 'Don't sing the song, sing the lyric.'

My mum was a dancer when she was a kid. Then my parents met and eventually had an art gallery; my dad taught himself how to frame pictures, and then he was a curator at an art gallery in the city I'm from. I'm an only child.

International politics is no longer a zero-sum game but a multi-dimensional arena where cooperation and competition often occur simultaneously. Gone is the age of blood feuds. World leaders are expected to lead in turning threats into opportunities.