Mike Nichols

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile.

I'm anything but confident.

Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that?

I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when.

Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort.

People, by and large, would rather be talking than listening.