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The so-called intellectuals don't like my films.

I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come to loathe them back, as it seems only polite to do so. But at heart it's absurd; we should band together against the big common enemies.

I hate all that woozy political and psychotherapeutic crap applied to books and art.

I studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they'd read or understood.

Many French directors, having now realised there was no more real criticism, that the standards of the past have gone, are very offended about the quality of film criticism.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

The public scrutiny element they don't teach you in film school. So few people are ever subjected to it.

There are people who don't like to use other films as research, but I love it.

Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.