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.'

Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.

My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.

There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.

Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.

Every fear hides a wish.

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.