In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.

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.

One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.

Nothing tortures your enemies more than seeing you walk with a smile of confidence on your face.

The Constitution was framed in order to form a more perfect union, not to establish mass confusion.

We musicians play in Time and with Time, but sometimes it is Time that plays with us. One day, unpredictably, the evolution of culture makes real an oeuvre which has lain in obscurity.

Our government is a bird with two right wings... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism.

We are disgusted by the things that we desire, and we desire what disgusts us.

Perseverance, determination, commitment, and courage-those things are real. The desire for redemption drives you.

I feel if you hold yourself as an artist first and foremost, the barriers of gender come down.

I'm very obsessed with 'The Real Housewives' franchise. It's a bad obsession.