Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.

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.

The first thing I am going to tell my successor is, don't trust the military men – even on military matters." JFK

How strange the feelings when it was not your name anymore that appeared as that person's favorite.

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.

It's part of life to have obstacles. It's about overcoming obstacles; that's the key to happiness.

I used to be scared of loosing you and it happened just as I had thought. I wonder if you ever feel hurt about having lost the love we had. Do you feel the pain that I feel?

The biggest thing is having a son. I got attached to him. Seeing him periodically is hard. Watching him grow up on pictures and videos is hard.

I think horror should have occult elements, not as its subject but as its ambition. It is a machine that destroys illusion. I, of course, never achieve this, but I always act as if I can.

When I first read 'On the Road,' it helped me figure out how to live against the grain. Now I wonder how to be subversive when the subversive has become mainstream.

If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands...