Once you have a situation that is fresh, then you sort of believe in it and it becomes normal. So you do end up with protagonists that haven't been in other movies before.

The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

One of the things that I do like about filmmaking is that you find out how to solve new problems.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Ultimately, it's an illusion that you can understand yourself.

Those artists who say that somehow therapy or analysis will thwart their creativity are completely misinformed. It's absolutely the opposite: it opens closed doors.

I teach a course in screenwriting at Columbia, but I've never taken a course and I've never read a book about it!

I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?

The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle it smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men. but it has one defect: it needs a driver.

People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.

Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living.

So many laws argues so many sins.

There is certainly a satisfaction and dignity to be gained in coming to terms with the mistakes one has made in the course of one’s life

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion between supposed lovers

God may work in light, but we mortals work in pigment.

Spiritual means religion without any rules. It's all the comfort of fictitious friends with none of their demands.