The audience requires not information but drama.

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.

Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.

I wonder what language truck drivers are using now that everyone is using theirs?

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

Birth in the physical is death in the spiritual. Death in the physical is the birth in the spiritual.

Although you have so far demonstrated little faith in my ability to pay, I yet hope to demonstrate that I am somebody who pays his debts-for example, to you.

I have never wanted to claim I know what is best for Israel.

Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts of grammar that are infinitely prolix, perplexed and obscure.

I'm just as white as I am black, and I'm just as Russian Jew as I am West Indian.

Never sweep. After four years the dirt gets no worse.

Skilled leaders focus on "we," not "me."