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" I learned everything, right or wrong, about honor and love, all those things, when I was a kid watching movies. I learned as much there as I did from my parents or my schooling or anything else. "

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" I do have a responsibility, but I would make the most boring films in the world if I woke up every morning worrying about my social responsibility. "

Sydney Pollack

Morning

Boring

Responsibility

" Beginnings and endings are not interesting; audiences want the high point, which means you've got to get to it and get to it now - get the gun out fast, the clothes off quick. "

" I hate to say it as a pejorative term, but I work for the Hollywood system for the most part. "

" I'd get bored if I... if I had to do a movie, and there was no love story in it, I would just be bored. I mean, I would do it, but it would be kind of boring. "

" Every time I am directing, I question why in God's name I'm doing it again. It's like hitting yourself in the forehead with a hammer. "

" And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing. "

Sydney Pollack

Knowing

Real

" By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that's led them into creating illusions, sound bites, focus groups that tell you what to do. "

" From almost the first time I stepped on a stage, I knew that was what I wanted to do. "

" South Bend is a nice town, but you know that phrase - 'I was homesick even when I was home.' "

" If you list the qualities that we consider feminine, they are patience, understanding, empathy, supportiveness, a desire to nurture. Our culture tells us those are feminine traits, but they're really just human. "

" When you're shooting a feature that costs $200,000 a day with a crew of 250, you don't want accidents; you want to know exactly what's going to happen. But with a documentary, you don't, so you have to be sensitive to accidents because that is where the gold is. "

" If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form. "

" I didn't grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon. "

" For reasons which I can't logically explain, in all of the films I've done, I've ended up doing love stories of one kind or another, and it seems to me that love stories are extremely dependent on the obstacles you can place between the lovers. There is no love story without it. "

Sydney Pollack

Obstacles

Love

" The essence to me of all good drama is argument. "

" I sort of straddle the line... between personal movies and mainstream Hollywood. "

" Before I saw 'Tootsie' with an audience, I thought, 'No one is going to believe this could convince anyone he's a woman.' "

" Kubrick and I were pretty good friends. "

" You have to go by your instincts in casting. "

" You know, essentially when you do a play you're reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That's not what happens with a movie. "

" It's impossible for me to go into a room or look at a location without a part of my brain photographing it - picking the best angle or looking at the way the light hits. "

" I guess all my films are about resolving conflicts - and they're all love stories. If they weren't, I couldn't make them. "

" I knew I wasn't going to be any great shakes as an actor - the way I looked, I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend. "

" Like a lot of New Yorkers, I assumed that I knew all about the U.N. I was shocked to find out it's not like anything I had in mind. There are only six languages accepted there. It's considered international territory. "

" People ask me over and over how is it that I work with stars. How do you work with Barbra Streisand, with Paul Newman, with Al Pacino, with Sally Field, Jane Fonda, you work with all these people. Isn't this a problem? And it isn't a problem at all. It's terrific. It's great fun. And I don't know what the answer is. "

Sydney Pollack

Fun

Great

" Audiences want to feel something intense, quickly, without wasting a lot of time. "

" I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form. "

" No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did. "

" Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies. "

" We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman. "