[on Joan Collins]: I thought she was going to be a big star. At the start, she had no confidence in herself, but, little by little, she confided in me. I told her I'd only do this film with her if she'd send her psychoanalyst away and allow me to take over. I said, "If you want to stretch out on a couch, come over to mine." She laughed, but she did send the analyst away.

People stimulate me, and I work along with them. Ideas come that never would have developed from a struggle with my own or some other writer's imagination. Besides, I never belonged to the school which holds that a director should stop thinking the moment he starts shooting.

[on Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy] [Laurel] was one of those rare comics intelligent enough to invent his own gags. Laurel was remarkably talented, while Hardy wasn't. This is the key to the Laurel-Hardy association. Throughout their lives (I was one of their intimates), Laurel insisted on earning twice as much as Hardy. He said he was twice as good and twice as important, that he wrote the film and participated in its creation, while Hardy was really incapable if creating anything at all -- it was astounding that he could even find his way to the studio.

I was a problem child, and problem children do the seemingly insane because they are trying to find out how to fit into the scheme of things.

[on Cary Grant whom he directed in three films] I still don't know what makes him tick. Of the sixteen hours a day when he's awake I don't think there are twenty minutes when he is not complaining. I've never seen a man more constantly in turmoil.

I love when people laugh. I love when they cry, I like a story to say something, and I hope the audience feels happier leaving the theatre than when it came in.

I don't know what my formula is. I only know I like my characters to walk in clouds. I like a little bit of the fairy tale. Let others photograph the ugliness of the world. I don't want to distress people.

[on accepting his Best Director Oscar for The Awful Truth (1937)] Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.

You can really call Irene Dunne 'The First Lady of Hollywood', because she's the first real lady Hollywood has ever seen.