The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

You cannot change anyone, but you can be the reason someone changes.

Your voice is strongest when you remain firm, when you are not moved by your circumstance. For we must not permit others to define who we are or what we stand for.

Let us assume nothing, and we shall not be moritifed.

We can't really understand just how wonderful Heaven will be unless we first know how wonderful each of us will be when we get there.

As I continued to fall into the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.

I just get really defensive as soon as anyone comes near my personal life. I made a decision early on that it's strictly off-limits. No exceptions.

I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

Christ did not make the atonement when he shed his blood upon the cross. Let this fact be fixed forever in the mind.

People who want to see the beauty of nature from motorboats and automobiles would obviously be just as pleased, and as fully recreated, at a drive-in movie.