A doctor could make a million dollars if he could figure out a way to bring a boy into the world without a trigger finger.

... if you love your country why is it necessary to hate other countries?

. . usually, the biggest problems of adapting plays into screenplays is that they stick too close to the play, and I think film is a completely different medium. I think a novel is much closer to a film.

There are many who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.

I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.

The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.

Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.