Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.

Sometimes the things you’ve lost can be found again in unexpected places.

You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.

Certain people have said that the world is like a calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action.

Tell me what it is, or prepare to eat harpoon.

There are many reasons, of course, why someone might snap their fingers and grin. If you heard some pleasing music, for instance, you might snap your fingers and grin to demonstrate that the music had charms that could soothe your savage breast. If you were employed as a spy, you might snap your fingers and grin in order to deliver a message in secret snapping-and-grinning code.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.