In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?

Its such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, Action! Its like being a little mini-god.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

I know a lot of directors have a whole staff of people trying to find their next film for them. I always just end up writing mine.

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.