Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

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.

Ben is the kind of guy that reaches into your heart and possesses it.

My blood boils when I see people going back to the same person who hurt them like a million times.

If you have the chance to achieve, do it. Life is about taking a chance on something incredible.

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

When you see two writers named on a movie, one of them did some drafts and got the boot.

Neither love nor ambition, as it has often been shown, can brook a division of its empire in the heart.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

A volunteer is a person who can see what others cannot see; who can feel what most do not feel.

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude