A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.

You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'

I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail.

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.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.