“The movies I made early on may not have been great, but they were all commercially successful.”

“Movies are like an expensive form of therapy for me.”

“The best movies have one sentence that they're exploring, a thesis, something that people can argue about over dinner afterward.”

“I'm not Michael Moore. I think Michael Moore wants to tell you how to think. He wants to give you answers. I make movies to raise my own personal questions and not to give answers.”

“The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.”

“I just want to keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully people will watch my movies.”

“I usually do get the tomboy parts in the movies, which is kind of like me, but not totally. I like to shop as much as Ashley, but she is a little more of a girlie-girl than me.”

“I'm not bragging but my movies have grossed well over a billion dollars.”

“In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.”

“I've been in enough movies to know that when you're on the set and you start shooting, you're looking at playback and you get a sense of what it's going to be like.”

“No, 'F/X 2' was a job. I enjoyed doing it but that was definitely a job. I wrote that, I didn't direct it but 'Candyman' and the earlier horror movies I made, I was completely into horror and suspense and always have been. It's informed everything I've done, even the way scenes are shot in 'Kinsey and 'Gods and Monsters.'”

“Being alone is scarier than any boogey man and the reason why I don't choose to see Horror movies as a rule.”

“Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.”

“The physical part of comedy is as hard as a lot of action movies. It scares me, but in a way that I like.”

“My children have never watched any of my films. Charlie knows that daddy makes movies, but he says they are not good enough for him to watch.”

“Bill Hanna and I owe an awful lot to television, but we both got our start and built the first phase of our partnership in the movies.”

“Why be boring? Have some fun. Rock shows should be like movies: I don't go to a movie hoping it'll change my life.”

“You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.”

“I look at myself as an audience member. I still love movies, and I still go and sit in the back of the big dark room with everybody else, and I want the same thrill.”

“I just think old old movies, they make you concentrate and pay attention so much more. They feel so warm. A lot of modern digital videotape, it's just too bright. Don't know why, it's not warm.”

“When I'm shooting a movie, I'm always in an invisible theater seat. I respect the fact that people have worked hard all week and want to go to the movies on the weekend and be entertained.”