But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.

I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.

I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

But, you know, Cronaca isn't more innovative than what comes after.

In Blow-up I used my head instinctively!

When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.

I meant exactly what I said: that we are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science.

Normally, however, I try to avoid repetitions of any shot.

We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.

All the characters in my films are fighting these problems, needing freedom, trying to find a way to cut themselves loose, but failing to rid themselves of conscience, a sense of sin, the whole bag of tricks.

I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.

When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them.

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.

When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film.

Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer.

Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.

The script is simply a series of notes for the film.

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

I was born and raised in Zambia in 1969. At the time of my birth, blacks were not issued birth certificates, and that law only changed in 1973.

Songs don't just come out of the air. They take time, but it's good fun, too. Maurice gave me encouragement.

The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.

I got more out of the farm than Harvard Business School.

I love my mom. My mom loves me. We don't have an easy relationship. I don't think we ever will, but I'd rather have a complicated, misunderstood relationship than have no relationship at all.

I've been using the Mac solely for years, and got very comfortable with it.

I have dear friends of mine who represent real Republicans. Goldwater Republicans. Strong on defense. Tough on immigration. Fiscal conservatives.

I hate raising money. It diverts you from what your real task is: to be a representative. You're diverted into preservation when you really want to spend your time and energy making a better state and a better country - which is the reason you ran in the first place.

Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.

My son is really good at being on trips with me. He understands what's going on. He grew up with me modeling, so it's quite normal for him to be on a shoot and in pictures because he sees me doing it.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Jimmy Carter proposed withdrawing the troops from South Korea. He was stopped by the United States Congress.

The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.

There's a way I could have done things differently. I know that. If I offended anyone along the way, I do apologize.

The times in my life when I've been my thinnest, I've been a walking psycho wreck. Forget the fact that I was basically starving myself; skinny was usually due to some kind of loss. Death. Rejection. Divorce.

I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die.

You want to believe in leaders, really believe in leaders. You want what they are saying to be truthful, and you want to trust them.

This is the artist, then, life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty's miser, glory's slave.

Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from.

thoughts are cheap and they don't hurt anybody.

I'm proud of my Irish heritage and culture and this show will feature a lot of Irish dancing.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

I would not call my family 'traditional Chinese.' We were more what I would term the Colonial Chinese.