The only economic paradigm that movies have ever known is capitalism. There were no church sponsors or state patronage. The idea was that if you'd pay to see it, we'll make it for you.

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.

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.

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!

We are known to be anti-authoritarian, anti-institutional, and notoriously anti-religious—more likely to quote Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Monty Python, or Star Trek than the Bible.

Our problem is that we don't have enough people in America, including black people, who are progressive and willing to sacrifice their popularity in order to tell the truth.

The heart of all idolatry in the Bible is the de-godding of God.

Hollywood panders to the 18-to-34 crowd. That demographic doesn't care about race and the package it comes in. They care about the hottest chick. They just like hot chicks.

The rich man never really gives anything, he only distributes part of the surplus. It is the person of moderate means who really gives.

Rather than the obsession with impurity, you'd do better to fear the nostalgia for purity.

The strongest people in the world are the ones who think they're weak.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nations, and from the mass of the nation only-not from its privileged classes.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

All people want on this earth is to connect with others. Other than eating and sleeping. Human beings need to connect with other human beings. Otherwise, they lose their mind.