A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.

It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.

Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.

Gradually my whole concept of time changed until I thought of a month as having twenty-five days of humanness and five others when I might just as well have been an animal in a steel trap.

If a brokenhearted mother could sing, I could not remain silent.

Art school had taught me it was far better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.

By forgetting the past and by throwing myself into other interests, I forget to worry.

I'm a punk rocker. I don't do Christian.

A man does not see where he treads in battle, for he is watching the enemy.

Words often spoil a moment of judgment or excitement; in all great puzzles and wars and movements, there is a moment to speak and a moment to accept with silent dignity.

Writing is the greatest thing about really good sitcoms.

What we're doing is giving her new exciting fashion things every month.

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.