[on being critical of others in print] I think that if you are articulate and can see that there is a serious flaw or even a disgraceful flaw in something that somebody has said - if one has enough fame to command the space, so to speak - it is one's duty to speak out. But I certainly don't do it out of any glee, and I quake with apprehension and I dread people hating me for it. It's certainly not done with any spirit of, "Oh boy, here's a fight!" Show less «

[on working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] I sort of likened him to Bluebeard. Each bride was vaguely aware there had been earlier brides but you didn't actually meet them or discover where they were interred. So, one always thinks, "He won't do anything like that to me." And of course, he always does! But if one never touches anything in life which is either polluted or even poisonous to one, one doesn't actually have much experience. So, I wasn't going to miss working with Kubrick, but I did kind of know what was coming in that regard. Show less «

[on Ray Stark] It was difficult to listen with both ears to such a man.

[on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] It was his final film, but what I thought was that it wasn't final. The fact that Stanley died in the March of a year when the film didn't come out until July makes it absolutely certain that every single second between what turned out to be the day of his death and the opening of the movie, had he been alive, he would have been tinkering and re-shooting - he had an infinite capacity for taking pains - and he wasn't alive to take them. So, the film was not correct. Equally, I think it's fair to say he was not at the height of his powers when he was making it, and Stanley was dying. You know, you've only got to feel vaguely unwell to know that you can't actually be on top of your game, and he was dying. So, you know, the film showed signs of age. Show less «

The writer may be crucial to the conception of a movie; he is seldom integral to the business of shooting it. He has to take his chances with what powerful directors or demanding stars will do when he is out of the way. Studio contracts make sure that nothing can guarantee him against being dumped or rewritten, misconstrued or ignored. Show less «

Suburbia... is the one place in the world that's further away than anything else.

[on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] I didn't like the movie hugely. The critics didn't like it hugely, because of course the worst thing that could happen with your movie is you should die. Curiously enough, it's become a sort of posthumous famous film, particularly in France and Italy, probably because as with the French and the Italians with Byron, they didn't fully understand what it had to say, but what they read into it, they liked - fine. Frankly, Eyes Wide Shut - it reminds me of what Mastroianni said to me, "cinema non è gran cosa": cinema is not a very big deal. It wouldn't really matter to me now whether I had done Eyes Wide Shut or not, and if you don't like it and think you're going to hurt me by telling me you don't like it, you're not, and if you did like it, I'm really glad to hear that. Show less «

[on L'Avventura (1960)] It made me think that the cinema was really worth doing. I'd actually decided to give it up, but after L'Avventura I realised that there was a thing called cinema that I could enjoy working in - it was an entirely different view of what a film should be. The film had such vitality, such emotion - a sense of eroticism that sustained the whole thing. It was actually a great paean of love to Monica Vitti. She'd been a sort of musical comedy actress, but with this film she became a star. Each time, the film uncovers something different. The first time, I thought it was the story of Sandro and Anna. She disappears, Sandro and Claudia search for her and seem to fall in love. But it's actually far more subtle. What Antonioni did was to take a plot that would normally have its resolution - ie, Anna would be discovered to have been murdered or to have gone off with someone else. But the extraordinary thing is that you never discover what happened. That was really what the new cinema was - it left things as mysterious as ever. And if you ask, 'What the hell was all that about?', the answer is that I can't tell you - but you'll keep watching because of the tension created. Antonioni composed his frames with extreme care, which frankly nobody in English cinema bothered consciously about, and not very much in America, either - he was a painter as well, of course. He also did something that was completely captivating. When people crossed the road, they didn't just step off the kerb and then cut to the other side, he actually took them across the road with the camera. So there was a strange sense of tension. He conveyed somehow the depths of people by the intensity of his looking at them, which is a rather painterly thing to do. Show less «

My greatest pleasure, as I look back on the long and arduous experience of working on Eyes Wide Shut (1999), is that I did something to enable Stanley Kubrick to make another movie. Show less «

[1999 interview, on Stanley Kubrick] I think he was the greatest director in the English-speaking world, certainly. For me, Antonioni is a greater director - Antonioni doesn't make films any more - I think Antonioni had something more charming, more loving. I mean, when Antonioni filmed Monica Vitti, somehow the camera made love to her. Show less «

I never had a happier or more privileged time in the movies than during the making of Two for the Road (1967). Stanley Donen told me that all he really cared about was that I should feel that he had made the movie I had in my mind's eye when I wrote the script. Show less «

[on Il gattopardo (1963)] We came out with a sense of the utter deadliness of the cinema. The supposed brilliance of Visconti, the supposed stardom of Burt Lancaster. He gave a moving performance, I suppose, but who is not moved by a dose of salts? Show less «

I think that writing movies is a servile act and we all would like to think it isn't, and of course it isn't to begin with because they haven't got anything until they've got something from you, so I always have compared it to a relay race where you are first off and you go belting round the track and arrive absolutely exhausted - they then take the baton and go cheerily off and when they get the gold medal at the end they've entirely forgotten there was a first leg to the relay at all. Show less «