"[I]f the vision of the world that has gone into the film turns out to be one that other people recognise as a part of themselves that up till now has never been given expression, what better motivation could there be for one's work."
Introduction, p. 12

"For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion."
Chap. 1 p. 17

"The fate of the genius in the system of human knowledge is amazing and instructive. These sufferers chosen by God, doomed to destroy in the name of movement and reconstruction, find themselves in a paradoxical state of unstable equilibrium between a longing for happiness and the conviction that happiness, as a feasible reality or state, does not exist."
Chap. 2, p. 53

"[Y]ou can achieve nothing in art unless you are free from received ideas. You have to work out your own...