I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.

The kind of pace that you want to use in a Western - just to acknowledge the land in the distance that everyone has to travel and the way things develop sort of slowly - it's almost the antithetical of what's currently going on in the movies you know.

I quit doing the movies because the wrestling was going so good and was so on fire during the '80s and '90s but I was getting all these movie scripts.

When I was a kid going into the movies you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

On radio and television magazines and the movies you can't tell what you're going to get. When you look at the comic page you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.

Yes I'm going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President.

I missed out on everything. Sometimes on the street I see teenagers hanging out and going to the movies going to concerts and I get so jealous.

Now there are so many movies so many festivals and so many awards going on each judged with each other like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

I was a total athlete. I loved sports but when I realized I wasn't going to be a professional athlete I realized I wanted to be in movies.

Well it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000 when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

I love going to movies.

Even if we die at 100 we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

I had a daughter who was 9 years old and I had the feeling I wasn't going to be a real parent if I didn't quit making movies for a while and spend time with her. I also felt that I'd made enough movies and said what I had to say at the time.

I crave working on those small independent movies because I love going to see those myself.

I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.

I'm glad movies aren't going to please everybody they can't. But what they have to be is recognisable. I don't equate myself with a master painter but I think you can recognise my films.

I actually think I have an audience member's sensibility about going to the movies.

I'm the first to admit that I like going to or my memories at least of going to Clint Eastwood movies or Charles Bronson or James Bond.

I want to make all kinds of movies. I do want to make big movies that are a lot of fun to go to but I also want to make movies that are going to stimulate some thought and maybe raise some awareness.

I don't make movies thinking: 'Oh this is going to be a huge box-office hit.'

Critics can be harsh and I think it's going to take me a long time to make people see what I have inside of me and that I really put my guts into movies and that I'm not superficial and that I'm not just a pretty face.

I'm not going to have a perfect career. It's better to be Billy Wilder and make lots of movies and have five or six great ones than to make so few movies that when you make a bad one it crushes you.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies and so I like to try each of them.