213 Quotes by Sydney Pollack

We progress by leaps and bounds technologically, medically - we can live longer, we can... but you know, in the year 1230, they knew as much as we know now about the human heart.

I fly an aeroplane, and I think a lot about how much I do not want ever to run into an optimistic air traffic controller. I just don't. I want a guy down there who's just waiting for the worst crash possible and petrified that it's going to happen on his watch. And then I feel safe flying into his territory.

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.

I'm as much a victim of the romantic myth of 'getting away' as anyone else. My head tells me it's myth, but I don't want to believe it is.

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.

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

When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.

There are very few Westerns that have ever made really giant money.

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.