"Life is very, very complicated and so films should be allowed to be too."

"Film has dream, film has music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames in a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness."

"If you switch on television it's just ridiculous and it's destructive. It kills us. And talk shows will kill us. They kill our language. So we have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television. Commercials and — I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk shows, real war against 'Bonanza' and 'Rawhide', or all these things."

"The superficiality of the experience is in fact what many viewers love about Hollywood movies. They take you on a ride. You climb into them, turn on the Cruise Control, and sit back. Not only are events, characters, and conflicts entirely predictable (most movies are their trailers), but there is nothing really at stake for anyone—actor, director, or viewer—in any of it. It's like a roller-coaster ride in this sense too—a few pre-programmed thrills and chills and then all is well. When it is over, you leave the theater and go home untouched by any of it. Anything that has happened has taken place entirely on the surface. That's what Antonioni meant when he said Hollywood was being nowhere, talking to no one, about nothing. It all takes place on a fantasy island. It's all "as if." There's no real danger or threat in any of it."