In my very first review I was already jaded, observing of 'Galia,' an obscure French film, that it 'opens and closes with arty shots of the ocean, mother of us all, but in between it's pretty clear that what is washing ashore is the French New Wave.' My pose in those days was one of superiority to the movies, although just when I had the exact angle of condescension calculated, a movie would open that disarmed my defenses and left me ecstatic and joyful.

I began my work as a film critic in 1967. I had not thought to be a film critic, and indeed had few firm career plans apart from vague notions that I might som…

Herzog by his example gave me a model for the film artist: fearless, driven by his subjects, indifferent to commercial considerations, trusting his audience to…

irony [is] a fashionable response to the experience of being had.

All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience:

Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.