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Television is the triumph of machine over people.

Often in television, you read a script and you're amazed that you get the scene given to you.

It is about this very abstract sense of displacement that he feels the moment he turns off the television.

Television is simply automated daydreaming.

There is a certain moment in the film when the son is in the nursing home and he goes to the television and turns it off because he sees himself in the image.

Since I've worked in film and television for so long, I've acquired the ability to let the version of the characters that lives in my mind make way for the living, breathing humans who are going to play them on screen. If you cast it right - and casting is about 80% of directing - they will eventually replace or exceed the imaginary image.

The man who plays his part upon the theatre of life almost always maintains what may be called an artificial character.

A human being is not a machine. Especially when it comes to creating.

While television is a good servant, it's a bad master. It can swallow up huge quantities of our lives without much happiness bang for the buck.

It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial.