The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won't answer the door.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'

I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

I don't care if I get $50m to do a film.

I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.

I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.