“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.”

“I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don’t come from your head but from life... I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power.”

“I find the humor in life, and laugh easily”

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”

“A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it trains people seeing it to react abnormally.”

“Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life… I have put only my talent into my works.”

“It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.”

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”

“Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television - you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.”

“Always look on the bright side of life.”