I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

Its such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, Action! Its like being a little mini-god.

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

Its as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm... it's hard for the audience to relate to them.

If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

Because I've been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

I am not I

Live each day as if it were the first day of marriage and the last day of vacation.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear

Each attraction, limited as it may appear to be, is a cosmic happening-it occurs within the broader pattern of things, within the endlessly complex structure which underlies our lives.

And watch out for Molly. See if she does anything unusual. There’s something I don’t trust about the way she exploded and then came back from the dead like that.

I'm not a victim - I never want to be perceived that way.

There can be very powerful releases of energy that can catch you off guard until you have a better sense of what you are doing.

A major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don't work well with their colleagues.

You deal. You survive. You grow up and you build a career. And you remember these big/little hardships. They make you human.

The way to have a company that executes well is you have to execute well yourself.