You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.

He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim.

I'm beginning to feel that the real endangered species on planet earth are not the whales and the elephants but those of us who can laugh at the world and ourselves. ... I fear the dry turn of the American mind, this focus on the literal, as much as I fear our capacity for self-destruction. We've become hagridden by facts, obsessed with product instead of process. Where's the energetic wit, the looney outlook, the frivolity, the lightness of comforting laughter? It has become fashionable to know and unfashionable to feel, and you can't really laugh if you can't feel.

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.

Where there is no faith, devils are a necessity.

A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.

Knowing Latin and having two years of Attic Greek gave me the strong foundation upon which I've built a career. I think the classical training, more than anything, has provided me with longevity.