We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: “Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?
What is our life: (Pause.) it’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment?
The leaf of the camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.
We’re all put to the test… but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?
If I could go back would I do it differently? Well, I can’t go back.
Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting fucked.
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only.
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It’s the failure of diplomacy. ‘War and Peace,’ ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
I’m afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.
There’s nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won’t ring from room service; your mother won’t be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you’re dead.
Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.
My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.
You can’t write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. ‘What is criminality and what is government’ is a theme that runs through every history.
Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we’re less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people’s political views.
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.
My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with – bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons – when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.