Consider: for all the gobbledegook [film studio] executives spout about backstory, all that we, the audience, want to know is what happens next. That's the only thing that's going on. . . . Character is nothing other than action, and character-driven means The plot stinks, and you'd better hope the star is popular enough to open the movie in spite of it.

I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.

You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.

The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.

Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.