“Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me.”

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”

“My films do well only because they are good, not because of me.”

“Whatever the director asks me to do, I will do and make him happy. I’m a fool.”

“In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.”

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

“People come up to me and say "Steve, what is film editing?" And I say "How should I know? You're the director."”

“[On The Sea being filmed] It's not a blockbuster and it's not going to earn half a billion in the first weekend, but it's a work of art and I'm very pleased with it.”

“Good films flop, atrocious films do well. Uncertainty is the only certainty in this business.”

“Movies make hash of the schoolmarm’s approach of how well the artist fulfilled his intentions. Whatever the original intention of the writers and director, it is usually supplanted, as the production gets under way, by the intention to make money — and the industry judges the film by how well it fulfills that intention. But if you could see the "artist’s intentions" you’d probably wish you couldn’t anyway. Nothing is so deathly to enjoyment as the relentless march of a movie to fulfill its obvious purpose. This is, indeed, almost a defining characteristic of the hack director, as distinguished from an artist.”