Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.

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.

I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

Humility is of central importance I think it's an underappreciated virtue in the contemporary discussion of law and politics.

I love summer. Because it means I can wear a bikini top and shorts, even just to go shopping.

The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.

Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.

Oh, the solitariness of sin! There is nothing like it, except, perhaps, the solitariness of death. In that isolation none can reach you, none can feed you.

From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.