Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

You never know how much time you have left.

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

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

Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.

If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?

As you grow older, you change.

When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Alcohol decimated the working class and so many people.

I mean, music totally comes from your soul.

People want to classify and say, 'OK, this is a gangster film.' 'This is a Western.' 'This is a... ' You know? It's easy to classify and it makes people feel comfortable, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't really matter.

Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.

One of the things is that the good intentions of Prohibition, from reading over the years and from becoming obsessed with the research of gangs in New York City, seems to have allowed crime figures at the time, like Luciano, Capone, Torrio and Rothstein, to organize to become more powerful, which pulled all the way through until the '70s.

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

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.

Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.

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

What the Dalai Lama had to resolve was whether to stay in Tibet or leave. He wanted to stay, but staying would have meant the total destruction of Tibet, because he would have died and that would have ripped the heart out of his people.

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.

And as I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things.

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

I grew up in the Lower East Side, an Italian American - more Sicilian, actually.

The young people today are the 21st century.

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

I don't agree with everything he did in his life, but we're dealing with this Howard Hughes, at this point. And also ultimately the flaw in Howard Hughes, the curse so to speak.

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

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.

Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.

You don't make pictures for Oscars.

The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

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

Can a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.

We can't keep thinking in a limited way about what cinema is. We still don't know what cinema is. Maybe cinema could only really apply to the past or the first 100 years, when people actually went to a theater to see a film, you see?

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

If I'm not complaining, I'm not having a good time, hah hah!

I think all of us, under certain circumstances, could be capable of some very despicable acts. And that's why, over the years, in my movies I've had characters who didn't care what people thought about them. We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like.

More personal films, you could make them, but your budgets would be cut down.

All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.

Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.

Howard Hughes was this visionary who was obsessed with speed and flying like a god... I loved his idea of what filmmaking was.

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.

My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.

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 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.

There are two kinds of power you have to fight. The first is the money, and that's just our system. The other is the people close around you, knowing when to accept their criticism, knowing when to say no.

Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again.

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

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.

I happen to like vampires more than zombies.

I've always liked 3D.

Most people have stereo vision, so why belittle that very, very important element of our existence?

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

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

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

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