“Cinema takes me to another world. That world is authentic, real, and welcoming. Cinema doesn’t belong to the winner but to the loser/loner. The blissful loser. I like that world.”

“There are winners and losers – and human will created the world we live in.”

“In this world there are winners and losers. And, of course, 'the others', who comprise the majority.”

“Winners will be losers if they don't support the losers.”

“The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.”

“Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino play losers very well. But my audience like to be in there vicariously with a winner. That isn't always popular with critics. My characters have sensitivity and vulnerabilities, but they're still winners. I don't pretend to understand losers. When I read a script about a loser I think of people in life who are losers and they seem to want it that way. It's a compulsive philosophy with them. Winners tell themselves, I'm as bright as the next person. I can do it. Nothing can stop me.”

“You’re a loser, I’m a winner.”

“Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.”

“People don't change. There are two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers. Black and white. I don't know where gray fits in, or if you can even live in that shade.”

“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”