Your characters get angry at you if you speak about them and stop you from giving birth to them on the page in revenge. Real writers sit down and write. Wannabe writers sit around and talk.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

I was surprised by how warm the response was, even among studio heads, who said they really, we do have to do something about glamourization of smoking.

I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.

The charm of smoking a cigarette from the point of view of the people who smoked them, and I was one of those people for many, many years, is an amazing pleasure and a hit that some people say, and I've never done heroin, but some people say that it rivals the heroin hit, so there is that pleasure. The-it kills you the same way that heroin kills you.

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

I always try to do true endings and that's where I got into trouble always because Hollywood wants to do happy endings.