I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.

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.

Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.

[Misquotation; not by Einstein.] If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. [Apparently remorseful for his role in the development of the atom bomb.]

New ideas emerge of their own free will if they are allowed to.

The best-run churches and organizations are masters of the midcourse correction. They plan in pencil.

Always talk to God, never listen to the cops.

All the sands of the world even when they unite together cannot create the hardness of a single rock!

Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo.

When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking.

The whole life of instinct serves the one end of bringing about death.

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down.