[In a 1989 interview] People see a big period piece and costumes and say, "Oh, my God!" They see Wall Street (1987) and don't realize how difficult it is to make Gordon Gekko look like Gordon Gekko.

[In a 1984 interview] To anyone, providing they had a passion for it. It's very tough to get a movie made, and you better really love what you're doing, or you'll fall by the wayside. But if you love what you're doing, it is the most thrilling and satisfying profession in the world.

[In a 1984 "Films in Review" interview] Once you run a studio, you find that as much as you enjoy it, you're getting farther and farther away from making movies. You're involved in a lot of administrative meetings, a lot of decisions about office space and parking lots, meetings with bankers and cash flow and five year plans, which is all stimulating, but you're not on the set that much, and you're two steps removed from movie making. It's the producers who are making the movie, and you're going to see the final cut. And if you go into this business because you loved making movies, the natural evolution of many presidents of film divisions is to form their own company, which means going back to movie making. It was really very orderly. I never leaped from story editor to production VP. It wasn't unusual: I worked and got promoted to the next step, and then worked some more, and got promoted to the next step