I never viewed screen drama as a vulgar form, or a lesser one, and I've never written it left-handed.

Dialogue is used to reveal not what we want to say, but what we are trying to hide.

Star Wars was great at the beginning and crap at the end while Star Trek has always been interesting, and the difference is in the writing, and the thematic intentions.

Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.

I'm a homebody, as many writers are, and need to be by myself, and I like to be by the Atlantic Ocean.

I think that gambling is a synthetic experience and that if you have any balls you gamble with your life. I have. So can everybody else.

I need as much of the business of making a film to be in my own workspace. It really ought to be a bit more like doing a novel, alone, at first. I'm feeling my way.

Out of all of the Star Trek movies, I happen to like the most recent one the best. I think it was the best one ever done.

When I was young I was only thinking of writing, and whatever was going on was unreal and comparatively unimportant.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

On historical you take the known facts, dramatize them, and then stitch them together by invention. It's a projective thing.

I was excited to do something, even if I didn't know what it was. I think you need that feeling—that excitement, that fire—to make your dreams a reality. (p.59)

A continuous growth, a steady growth is a demand of life.

Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

Painful memories didn't just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once

My first reaction at the very idea of this interview was to refuse to talk about photography. Why dissect and comment a process that is essentially a spontaneous reaction to a surprise?

It is so important that you don't stay with someone just for the children and for the wrong reasons.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

I prefer Offenbach to Bach often.

I'm higher than I expected.