“You can do something that walks a line, and invariably, whatever that line is, it will be crossed by people who don't know any better and want to ape the success.”

“The line between failure and success is so fine… that we are often on the line and do not know it.”

“Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line.”

“I find it very scary that people try to profit off of things like genetically manipulating things. For what? There’s a fine line between progress and cruelty. If you change something in nature can you ever really go back and have we already crossed that line?”

“In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest—the one who crosses the finish line last.”

“I don’t keep any notion of certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I want my fellow actors to feel like they are free and can give any kind of performance, whatever seems natural. I think all actors would feel that way and I think it’s what the director would want as well.”

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.”

“Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line.”

“To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line…. That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.”

“Ironically, when it was released in 1979 it was challenged by feminists who thought it was anti-feminist and by anti-feminists who thought it was feminist. I was trying to walk a nice gray line but people who feel strongly about a subject don’t want a gray line. They want it to be all black or all white.”