There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.'

The French director Robert Bresson made the observation: “My job is not to find out what the public want and give it to them; my job is to make the public want what I want.

I was responsible for a clause that is now standard in all studio DVDs, the disclaimer that states that the studio is in no way responsible for any of the content or comments made by people appearing in the interviews on the disc. It is hard to overstate the importance of this clause: It enables those supplementary DVD segments to be more than mere puff pieces but a valuable form of oral history. People can tell their differing, multiple versions and perceptions of the truth.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn’t disappear.

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they’ve done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it’s the “definitive” something, I’m always recoiling.

If you look at the heroes of antiquity and myth, they all have flaws. It’s something that they have to overcome; their flaws are something that they have to act in spite of. The challenge is not to defy your fate, but to endure it. That is heroic.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It’s a collaborative adventure.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something – for a building that will most likely never be built.

Art doesn’t just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

Audiences may be stupid, but they are never wrong.