I'll make it. I won't die. I've got too much I have to do to let myself die.

You can't have virtue without sin. What I'm after is having my characters' virtues defined by how they operate in a very sinful environment. That's how you test people.

A screenwriter is much like being a fire hydrant with a bunch of dogs lined up around it.

When you think of what Americans accomplished, building these amazing cities and all the good it's done in the world, it's kind of disheartening to hear so much hatred of America, not just from abroad, but internally.

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.

Sometimes the solitary voice can be the best one.

But I'm not trying to convince anybody how to vote or how to live. Nobody's ever successfully accused me of being realistic.