Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

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.

As far as it’s ideal that you get helped by people, it doesn't mean they are compelled to make your dreams come true without your own efforts.

If international law is, in some ways, at the vanishing point of law, the law of war is, perhaps even more conspicuously, at the vanishing point of international law.

Wow, so much of the way I've transacted my life... so much of the results that I'm happy about are because of what Daddy did.

There is always scope for football to be more charitable but a lot happens already. Personally I have always been passionate about charity.

I see no kind of reason to not just try everything. I mean, I feel like we all have such varied tastes, and to not just try our tastes is a crime.

Strike-for your altars and your fires; Strike-for the green graves of your sires; God-and your native land!

Genius is sorrow's child.

Once you accept the fact that you're not perfect, then you develop some confidence.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

I don't write books for people to be friends with the characters. If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party.