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.

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?

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

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.

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.

the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.

A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.

The cup is both half full and half empty

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Your character should always be stronger than your circumstances.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles.

When I was nine years old I use to copy ( not trace ) the covers of the Donald Duck comics. Many years later I became a close friend of Jack Hannah, the director of the Donald Duck film shorts.