I'd rather make an interesting film that gets people talking, that maybe some people hate, than make the kind of 'entertaining' film that everyone feels ambivalent about.
The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals.
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.
Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity , then of our wisdom , ultimately of our coercion.
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.
Rather than beautifying one’s own creation, make better the environment that surrounds it.
Seventy-five percent of great art is hard work only about twenty-five percent is great talent.
Distrust my wisdom, but regard my truth.
When I first started coming to New York in the early Nineties and seeing the vitality of the programme compared to what was going on back in London or Paris, it was just in a different league. It's like a 16th-century court.