Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

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.

I never assume anything. I anticipate the possibilities and allow my imagination to create the future.

We all know it's safer to beat up on people who won't retaliate, ' he told her, 'but it's a quick way to lose friends. You need to find ways of dealing with confrontation when it happens.

You see, but you do not observe.

We must do the best we can with what we have.

What does your sorrow do while you sleep? -It’s awake and waiting. And when it loses patience, it wakes me up.

If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved.

Lead the reader toward the thought, then stop a little short.

I want to be as though new-born, knowing nothing, absolutely nothing about Europe.

I have orders not to come back until I'm a thousand percent.

There really isn't a time to pause and have a celebration. I feel so serious about the whole thing.