The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.

Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due.

Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.

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

When we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes were, or how interesting the ideas, it means we had a bad time.

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.