If you paint, write, do mosaics, knit - if it's solving that part of your brain saying, 'I need to do this,' you've won.

So I think if you're happy with your brain, you're powerful.

My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.

Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch.

Film is the cheapest part of the movie making process. The expense is the 100-man crew and the financing and everything.

In the course of my movies, the financing and the releasing were always the tough part. Because I loved the creative, I loved the writing, I loved the making of it. Because I guess, I never had the giant blockbuster, I never got that sort of ease for the next one. So the next one was always, "how am I going to do this?" And that thing was sort of always the thing that made me a little chickenshit to go into the next one. The writing of it was great and the making of it was great, but how am I going to release this thing and am I going to find a studio?

Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.