Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

The stuff that I write doesn't work very well as background music. You have to watch it from beginning to end and pay attention as if you were watching a play.

Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren't that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.

I think that if I couldn't write, I would be unemployable.

Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That's what I look for.

I consider plot a necessary intrusion on what I really want to do, which is write snappy dialogue. But when I'm writing, the way the words sound is as important to me as what they mean.

You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.'