Every fear hides a wish.

The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing; that politicians go in poor and go out rich; that the Government screws up everything it touches; and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.

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.

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

My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

I like Bach. I like Randy Newman.

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