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

You make a deal. You figure out how much sin you can live with.

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

I'm re-energized by being around people who mean a lot to me.

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

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

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

The most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and sound?

I'm sad to see celluloid go, there's no doubt. But, you know, nitrate went, by the way, in 1971. If you ever saw a nitrate print of a silent film and then saw an acetate print, you'd see a big difference, but nobody remembers anymore. The acetate print is what we have. Maybe. Now it's digital.

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

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.

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.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

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

If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we're basically headed towards holograms.

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.

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.

Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing.

It's interesting that these themes of crime and political corruption are always relevant.

People say you should do it this way, someone else suggests that, yes, there's financing, but maybe you should use this actor. And there are the threats, at the end - if you don't do it this way, you'll lose your box office; if you don't do it that way, you'll never get financed again... 35, 40 years of this, you get beat up.

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.

The young people today are the 21st century.

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 also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

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.

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

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.

I've seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.

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.

There was always a part of me that wanted to be an old-time director. But I couldn't do that. I'm not a pro.

The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.

There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.

I think when you're young and have that first burst of energy and make five or six pictures in a row that tell the stories of all the things in life you want to say... well, maybe those are the films that should have won me the Oscar.

I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

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.

I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.

I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.

I've always liked 3D.

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

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

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.

As you grow older, you change.

The best I can do is to make a film every two years.

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.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.

It's hard to let new stuff in. And whether that admits a weakness, I don't know.

The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.