It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.

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

It is the objective of the protagonist that keeps us in our seats.

The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.

The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.

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

My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.