I always have humour in my action movies. I think characters that make jokes under fire are more real. It somehow helps put you in their shoes.

You have to keep surprising your audience.

The only way you can stay on top is to remember to touch bottom and get back to basics.

Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain.

An action film can have too much action; picture an equaliser on a stereo, with all the knobs pegged at 10. It becomes a cacophony and is, ultimately, quite boring.

I love the idea of a super villain that doesn't wear a cape, that doesn't wear a super suit.

I have these guilty pleasures, these failed films that don't work at all, but I'll watch them if they're on. Like 'The Game'.

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.

I think it's very admirable, in a superhero movie, to be able to take a few risks.

I wrote all the time, but the idea of doing it professionally seemed like pie in the sky. Who gets paid to write? I grew up in Pittsburgh, so it wasn't really a notion that a lot of people pursue.

I wanted at one point to act, which is a weird thing for men to want to do. It's a very vain profession.

Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.

An artist is generally expected to stick to one motif, one persona. People get used to seeing someone put down a certain thing.

The tendency of life is not the preservation of the species, but solely the preservation of each individual organism, as long as it is in existence at all, and is able to carry on its life processes.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

I like to think that I can introduce people to the idea of simplicity and elegance.

It was the most amazing opportunity to work on a period movie and transform Anthony Hopkins into Hitchcock.

Massachusetts women as a rule adhere too strongly to old-time conventions.

Sovereign. Deadly. Perfect.

Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it.