Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

A bird only conquers the sky when it has mastered enough courage to lose sight of the ground.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

The ability to understand the cause of your own suffering gives you the ability to understand ours.

The pathos of life is worse than the tragedy.

What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.

Let the ancient serve the present, let the foreign serve the national; by developing that which has been accomplished one creates something that is new.

I think when we don't know what to do it's wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.

One thing about the past. It's likely to last.

Existence does not listen to your desires, and does not follow your desires, however beautiful and however pious. Existence goes on in its own way.