A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement

The most durable thing in writing is style. It is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

You don't get rich, you don't often have much fun. Sometimes you get beaten up or shot at or tossed into the jail house. Once in a long while you get dead. Every other month you decide to give it up and find some sensible occupation while you can still walk without shaking your head. Then the door buzzer rings and you open the inner door to the waiting room and there stands a new face with a new problem, a new load of grief, and a small piece of money.

One would think a writer would be happy here — if a writer is ever happy anywhere.

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.