A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.

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.

No matter how hard they try, they'll never create anything so perfectly beautiful as what plays out in my own imagination.

Risk is the stuff that sucks the predictability right out of the very things that we desperately wish were predictable.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government

You could be adding gasoline to a roaring fire. We understand that. But this is who we are.

'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.

If I filled the Earth with blueberries, I would have the same number as atoms in a grapefruit.

Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers.

Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good.

You've really got to keep on improving and improving and improving. It still involves work. It's not like you get to a point, and then you're good and that's it.

The truth was, I wasn't sure. But I wanted to keep believing people could change, and it was certainly easier to do so when you were in the midst of it.