I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.

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.

Fiction is as easy as telling a convincing lie. The more believable the better the story.

I'm not apologizing to anybody for anything.

Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

Dedication to one's work in the world is the only possible sanctifica-tion. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else's work, not yours.

If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders.

The most important task of your life is not what you do, but who you become.

That's what they do to whatever I was - 19 or something. You're the baby hooker. You can ask any woman my age and we've all played baby hookers.

Come to think of it, Pasadena's as good a place to die as any.

Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand, Only when infinity weds the finite's thought, Can man be free from himself and live with God.

Every time i try and wink at someone, I mess it up and end up scaring people.