Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.

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.

If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your beain will live, but your heart will die

She has built her whole life on the foundation of beauty: each chiseled plane, each sloping dimple, each soft curve as crucial as keystones in the cathedral of her body.

The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death so are statues and inscriptions so is history.

We need to cooperate globally on epidemic preparedness and prevention in the same way we are cooperating globally to stop people from getting nuclear weapons.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.

The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.

When we are dead : it is the living only who cannot be forgiven the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind .

The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.

In my entire life growing up I've never heard my dad say an unkind word about anyone. My father has always taken the high road in life and to me he's a complete inspiration without being a pushover.

They eat, they crap, they sleep, and if they're crying they need to do one of the three and they're having trouble doing it. Real simple.