Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.'

There is, in any art, a tendency to turn one’s own preferences into a monomaniac theory.

It’s sometimes discouraging to see all of a director’s movies, because there’s so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director’s artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he’s a hack.

If there’s anything to learn from the history of movies, it’s that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence.

I felt as if I had attended the funeral of someone I didn’t know.

Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being “wised up” knowing the tricks, the shortcuts.

What is getting older if it isn’t learning more ways that you’re vulnerable?

There is something spurious about the very term ‘a movie made for TV,’ because what you make for TV is a TV program.

McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they’ve freed people from the shame of not reading. They’ve rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.

Television as we have it isn’t an art form – it’s a piece of furniture that is good for a few things.