"I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it."

"The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies, like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'"

"Anytime you cast a movie and you need someone famous in the lead part, you're a prisoner of whoever happens to be famous in the six-month window in which you're trying to get a film financed."

"When you're a houseguest and you leave, it's nice to straighten something up or send your hosts a useful gift. And when you leave the planet, it's nice to have made a positive contribution."

"Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart."

"Varieties of angels, like varieties of love, are many."

"The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so."

"Young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning."