"I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million — a gamble for high stakes."

"I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone — and this is my biggest satisfaction."

"I would rather live in a country where children are protected and their predators prosecuted, and even (which in Hollywood is evidently not always the same thing) disapproved of."

"‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.’"

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

"I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing."

"If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children."

"You know, whenever you do something new and original, people run to see it because it's different. Then, if it happens to be successful, the studios rush to imitate it. It becomes commonplace right away. But it's been like that before, I think. Now, the stakes are so gigantic that they cut each other's throats. So if most of the films are failures, then those that succeed so spectacularly, so commercially, become the norm. It's like a roulette for the studios. The problem with it is that it becomes more and more of a committee. Before, you dealt with the studio. It had one or two persons and now you have masses of executives who have to justify their existence and write so-called "creative notes" and have creative meetings. They obsess about the word creative probably because they aren't."

"On February 26 last, Roger Gunson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, now retired, testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren, the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question him, that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that my term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence I would have to serve."

"33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States."

"I never made a film which fully satisfied me."

"He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does."

"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!"

"It's easy to direct while acting — there’s one less person to argue with."

"Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule."

"Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva."

"Vous êtes un sot en trois lettres, mon fils."

"Ah! Il n'y a plus d'enfants!"

"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?"

"Presque tous les hommes meurent de leurs remèdes, et non pas de leurs maladies."

"Contre la médisance il n'est point de rempart."

"Nous avons changé tout cela."

"Il y a fagots et fagots."

"J’enrage de bon cœur d’avoir tort, lorsque j’ai raison."

"Le monde, chère Agnès, est une étrange chose."

"Je fais toujours bien le premier vers: mais j'ai peine à faire les autres."

"Une femme d'esprit est un diable en intrigue."

"Ah que je— Vous l'avez voulu, vous l'avez voulu, George Dandin, vous l'avez voulu, cela vous sied fort bien, et vous voilà ajusté comme il faut, vous avez justement ce que vous méritez."

"Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire."

"Tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat."

"À votre nez, mon frère, elle se rit de vous."

"On ne meurt qu'une fois; et c'est pour si longtemps!"

"La grammaire qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois."

"Je le soutiendrai devant tout le monde."

"Il est de sel attique assaisonné partout."

"Ah, la belle chose que de savoir quelque chose."

"Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien."

"Jurons, ma belle, Une ardeur éternelle."

"Un sot savant est sot plus qu'un sot ignorant."

"Les beaux yeux de ma cassette."

"[J]e veux que tu me dises à qui lu parles quand lu dis cela. Je parle... je parle à mon bonnet."

"Vous parlez devant un homme à qui tout Naples est connu."

"Le véritable Amphitryon, Est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."

"J'aime mieux un vice commode, Qu'une fatigante vertu."

"Le Seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule."

"Tout ce qui n'est point prose, est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers, est prose."

"Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger."

"Les doutes sont fâcheux plus que toute autre chose."

"Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte: À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate."

"On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers."