Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
We are men of action, lies do not become us.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
Nobody knows anything.
But this is life on earth, you can't have everything.
The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.
If you think of human experience as a pie, then the wedge Hollywood is reflecting now is getting smaller and smaller.
Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it, putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before.
One of my great breaks is I have only done work I wanted to do.
One way an author dies a little each day is when his books go out of print.
As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless - and absolutely essential.
Hollywood is a pretty edgy place.
Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.
I don't want the power. When a project is given to me, and I say yes, I'm gonna oblige everybody who has the power to try to make it work.
It's always true, and in all the arts. When one guy's terrific, there will be a lot of other terrific guys around. And this last decade, the '90s, has been a period of very low talent.
Coming from where I came from, the Midwest, in the era I was born, the '30s, movies were glorious fun - Bette Davis dying or whatever. But whatever they were, they were not serious.
Never argue with your wife about hostility when she's a certified Freudian.
Being a screenwriter is not enough for a full creative life.
If you're going to abridge a book in the author's own words, you can't go sticking your own in.
We had terrible trouble finding a Buttercup because she had to be so beautiful. We had all kinds of pretty girls come in, but they weren't this staggering thing.
