Quotes

If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, 50 years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist and honored accordingly ... In Hollywood - in Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production in the last three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ere this. It is that terrific, unfortunately necessary, egotism in the makeup of the people who make the cinema, it is the continuous endeavor for recognition, that continuous struggle for survival and supremacy, among the newcomers, that relegates the old-timers to the ashcan.

The difference between me and [Ernst Lubitsch] is that he shows you the king on the throne and then he shows you the king in his bedroom. I show you the king in his bedroom first. Then when you see him on the throne you have no illusions about him.

[on seeing the two-hour version of Greed (1924), rather than the whole film] It was like viewing a corpse in a graveyard.

[on Irving Thalberg and the cutting of Greed (1924)] The man who cut my picture has nothing on his head but a hat!

[shouting at actors while shooting Foolish Wives (1922)] I'm making this picture for the theatre! Not for the actors!

[dying in bed, informing his biographer] This is not the worst. The worst is that they stole 25 years from my life...

[Sunday, May 18, 1941, article "I Am an American Day"] I feel that the many reasons why I am glad to be an American will be propounded by others more articulate and eloquent than I... therefore I shall not touch "Liberty" and all other prerogatives that are America's. One reason I dare mention. I have been traveling abroad a great deal lately and I have had ample opportunity to notice the profound respect that little red passport with that gilded spread eagle and that simple inscription, "United States of America", commands everywhere ... no matter who the bearer may be. They may not love us everywhere ... but they respect and fear us. I prefer that!

My Vienna is as different from what they call Vienna now as the quick is from the dead.

[shouting at Jean Hersholt and Gibson Gowland during a fight scene in Greed (1924)] Fight! Fight! Try to hate each other as you both hate me!

[introducing his version of The Merry Widow (1925)] All the good things in this film were made by me. The things that are no good in it were made by others.