I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bill Clinton will stop smoking cigars, will never smoke them again, as a result of what he did with that cigar.

I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.

A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old.

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.

They do the same thing [with cigarette] that they do in the kind of action picture where you know 200 people are killed and then there's no pain.

I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.