"Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested…"

"I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're ou…"

"In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."

"When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness…"

"A woman who taught at Berkeley dropped in on me once and saw a book burning in the fireplace. She pointed at it in te…"

"Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize."

"It's as if Brian de Palma were saying, "What is getting older if it isn't learning more ways that you're vulnerable?""

"Object to the Hollywood film and you’re an intellectual snob, object to the avant-garde films and you’re a Philistine…"

"I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remu…"

"Kicked in the ribs, the press says "art" when "ouch" would be more appropriate."