It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

Its such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, Action! Its like being a little mini-god.

Its as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm... it's hard for the audience to relate to them.

If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

Because I've been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

We can't control our destiny. We can't go back into our past history and make changes. But we can begin this moment by setting a goal and pursuing it for a better life with a greater purpose.

It is not a question of living dangerously. That formula is too arrogant, too presumptuous. I don't care much for bull-fighters. It's not the danger I love. I know what I love. It is life itself.

If you want to fly with the eagles you can't hang out with the crows.

Blessed be those souls who are glad! They are a salve for sorrow and fatigue. A sun in days of darkness, a joy in sorrow, a ray of heaven shining through the uncertainness of earth.

The thing is to dazzle

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.

He who conquers the mind, conquers the world.

I wish to die painting.

I wouldn't dream of selling my work. I give them to friends, to charities.

We could ask artists from abroad to come in too, so that there could be a mixing and matching of skills from Europe, America and here which would widen our world.