No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

The occupational hazard of being a Playboy Bunny is the aching facial muscles brought on by obligatory smiles.

Be a man and breathe life back into the woman in me.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before he is defeated.

Mother's love grows by giving.

A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?

Literacy, written language is a very late acquisition in terms of human evolution.

You can't kill a good comic book series.

I appreciate the fact, and am proud of it, that the attentions I am receiving are intended more for our country than for me personally.

Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.