The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.

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.

When God calls a man, He is calling him to success

You didn’t understand the poem, but that was because it wasn’t for you. It was for me to understand the pain you put me through.

I missed him so much that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place.

...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

If I am through learning, I am through.

Watching those guys pummel each other so no one would suspect them of being weak was too much for me. Their reputations were more important than their faces.

You've already been at the bottom. Why don't you go for the top?

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

Narrative and characters have always interested me. I never tried to alienate an audience. Of course, gradually, I wanted a bigger and bigger space to draw people in, so it's very organic [growth].

I wanted to wear a uniform when I was in high school, but I couldn't. I was like, "It would be so much easier!"