Born on July 7th

"Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger."

"If you feel that you are good, don't be too proud of it."

"Above all, you must fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your heart."

"The dearest days in one's life are those that seem very far and very near at once."

"Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be."

"I was a great dreamer of day dreams."

"If it be true that our people represent a high percentage of mental vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some measure, to the extremely important part which Talmud studies have played in the spiritual life of the race."

"God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless man wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something burning, forbidding, something connected with fire while a day had the form of an oblong box."

"Only the other world has substance and reality; only good deeds and holy learning have tangible worth."

"If you study the Talmud you please God even more than you do by praying or fasting."

"You must never tire fighting Satan."

"Remember that it is not enough to abstain from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are often conveyed by a false look, smile, or act."

"What is wealth? A dream of fools."

"The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman from religious life."

"If a man is tongue-tied, don't laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs."

"What is this world? A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter."

"I grew up in Albany Park in Chicago and then went to Lake View High School."

"I have this data bank garbage can in the back of my head that is an emotional collection of events that have occurred in my life."

"I was an outsider as a kid, and I grew up around a lot of violence."

"I know what it is like to fear violence. I understand the adrenalin rush that comes before violent confrontations. I write my scripts from an emotional point of view and direct so the audience can experience this adrenalin rush."

"One of the great things going on in Chicago is the educational facilities here. And the largest film school in the world is right here in Chicago: Columbia College."

"Having been subjected to the pigeonholing of Hollywood myself, I realized that once you become a studio-approved director, your chances of ever making your own film again are zero. You make the films that the studio wants you to make."

"The whole idea of 'Death Line' was to kind of highlight class distinctions in England more than to make a scary movie, and I just kind of wrapped my political treatise of the class distinctions in England in this movie."

"The gruesomeness of 'Death Line' was an absolute necessity for me to bring up the political content of the film. I wanted to show how devastating class distinction could be."

"'Vice Squad' needed to be real if it was going to have the impact that I wanted it to have."

"I think that we, as a civilization, need to sit down and figure out how to solve political problems over a table, not over a battlefield."

"I'm very much against war; I'm very much against terrorism of any kind. I find terrorism to be one of the most appalling things that can exist in society."

"I am anything but a misogynist - I am quite far to the other side of that."

"You get an audience to laugh and then show them something horrific, it's going to be even more horrific because they've had the release of the laugh before it."

"Working with Jack Albertson was one of my great joys."