The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood's Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it's getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.