Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
It's only words... unless they're true.
I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle.
We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.
My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.
What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
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.
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
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.
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.
The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.
I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.
I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When 'American Buffalo' came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, 'How dare he use that kind of language!' Of course I'm alienating the public! That's what they pay me for.
