The conscious mind is going to suggest the obvious, the cliché, because these things have offered the security of having succeeded in the past.

IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.

We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"

Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.

We all die in the end, but there's no reason to die in the middle.