The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy.

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.

Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.

Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed.

It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.

The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.

People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'