Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'

The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit. Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.