It's hard enough to get any movie made, and when you take on these tough genres - and I've done it a couple times - it just makes the whole struggle more.

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.

Almost every other Western in the last ten years has failed, since Dances with Wolves.

And you know, when you take on something like this, you read a book like this, you know that it's going to be an adventure. That's part of what draws you to it.

With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.

I loved Alien, and I loved Carrie, and I loved The Exorcist - those were big movies for me. They were just brilliantly done, and unusual, and they all took horror to some new place.

I mean, the trouble with some of the kind of relationship movies I've done, is there's only so many ways you can shoot a conversation. I was really tired of talking heads.

But, George and Steven asked me to write the Indiana Jones sequels, and I didn't want to.

I really liked Carrie a lot. That was one of Brian De Palma's best movies.

I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.

Any story that Billy Wilder told, you can tell in a Western.

The future is never set in stone.

I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.(Conversations pg 96)

Talent is nothing without persistence.

Even when I’m in the dark I’m in the dark with you.

Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.

I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy.

You only need one good reason to commit to an idea, not four hundred. But if you have four hundred reasons to say yes and one reason to say no, the answer is probably no.

Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.

Forgiveness works the miracle of change.