Quotes from James Toback

I write fast, I write beautifully, I write convincingly.

I feel like Alain Delon, who once said, "It doesn't matter that I'm not a star in America because I'm a huge star in France, I'm a legend in Spain, and I'm a god in Japan.

The past is history, the future's a mystery.

You will never convince anyone to do anything unless you believe it should be done.

Use people whom you're excited by and who share your excitement... The ideal collaboration is one in which the actor and director are saying to each other, 'I can't believe how lucky we are to be making a movie together.'

It's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.

Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.

The idea that there aren't mistakes made constantly in the judicial system is too obvious even to need to mention.

Most of my movies get about a third raves, a third vicious attacks, and a third in-between.