I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Once you have a situation that is fresh, then you sort of believe in it and it becomes normal. So you do end up with protagonists that haven't been in other movies before.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?

I am a storyteller and experience the bliss of writing.

The elderly become invisible sooner than we would hope.

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

I'm from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

I love the writers in Austin. We stick together. We all like each other and go to each other's book signings in case no one else shows up.

I love that sense of release as you throw yourself into the crowd as hundreds of arms are carrying you.

Some souls attain enlightenment. No one knows why. You could say it is individual inclination. I'm not convinced that's the case.

You always want to get at-bats. You always want to contribute.

Practice the 101 Percent Principle. Whenever possible, find the 1 percent you do agree on in a difficult situation, and give it 100 percent of your effort.