“I got my first assignment as a director in 1927. I was slim, arrogant, intelligent, foolish, shy, cocksure, dreamy and irritating. Today, I'm no longer slim.”
Michael Powell, 1987
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Michael Powell 16
English film director 1905–1990Related quotes

Often paraphrased as "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Compare: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." B. Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951). Compare also: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919).
See also: Dunning-Kruger effect, Historical Antecedents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect#Historical_antecedents.
1930s, Mortals and Others (1931-35)

Statement to PETA, as quoted in "Miss USA Winners Pose Naked in Sexy New PETA Ad", E! Online (June 13, 2013) https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/429232/miss-usa-winners-pose-naked-in-sexy-new-peta-ad-check-it-out.
“I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences.”
Letter to George Devine (10 March 1964), printed in Kenneth Tynan : A Life by Dominic Shellard<!-- Yale University Press, 2003, --> , p. 292
Context: I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.

Reported in Ellis Cose, " Justice: Still Keeping Score http://web.archive.org/web/20070605123712/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18248548/site/newsweek/page/2/", Newsweek (April 30, 2007).
1990s

The Hindu article by Arti Das - I am a first-class writer and a second-class director: Sai Paranjpye https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/i-am-a-first-class-writer-and-a-second-class-director-sai-paranjpye/article26606850.ece - 23 March 2019 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210901092539/https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/i-am-a-first-class-writer-and-a-second-class-director-sai-paranjpye/article26606850.ece
Quotes from Sai Paranjpye

"Today I Started Loving You Again" (January 1968), inspired by Bonnie Owens, who is credited as co-writer.

“Joan, you are one irritating Jew-broad! The first time I heard your voice, my foreskin fell off.”
Joan Rivers Comedy Central Roast (2009)