As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can't get anyone to notice the picture we just hung.

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!

The Government goes after the little guys, not their own.

Everyone's got their own way of loving. There's no such thing as 'supposed to

When a fantasy turns you on, you're obligated to God and nature to start doing it - right away.

I think old age is in each one's head; so if you're happy doing what you love, you're going to be young.

I’ve decided to pick my moment to retire very carefully – in about 200 years’ time.

Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself.

Actually, all I ever wanted to be was the best in my field.

Ive been to London twice. I saw the Broadway show Billy Elliot there - phenomenal. I was crying through the entire thing.

Prayer is the supreme activity of all that is noblest in our personality, and the essential nature of prayer is faith.

When we run from God, we run away from everything that makes us alive and free. We run away from our own happiness. We leave our place where we belong—close to his heart.