"If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, fifty years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist and honored accordingly. ... In Hollywood - in Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production in the last three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ere this. It is that terrific, unfortunately necessary, egotism in the makeup of the people who make the cinema, it is the continuous endeavor for recognition, that continuous struggle for survival and supremacy, among the newcomers, that relegates the old-timers to the ash-can." "The difference between me and [Ernst] Lubitsch is that he shows you the king on the throne and then he shows you the king in his bedroom. I show you the king in his bedroom first. Then when you see him on the throne you have no illusions about him." [on seeing the two-hour version of Greed, rather than the whole film] "It was like viewing a corpse in a graveyard". [on Irving Thalberg and the cutting of Greed] "The man who cut my picture has nothing on his head but a hat!" [shouting at actors while shooting Foolish Wives] "...I'm making this picture for the theatre! Not for the actors!" [Dying in bed, telling his biographer] "This is not the worst, the worst is that they stole twenty-five years from my life..." "If you live in France, for instance, and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, fifty years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist and honored accordingly. People take off their hats and call you maitre. They do not forget. In Hollywood - in Hollywood you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production within the last three months you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ere this."