There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

Never sleep with anybody who has more problems than you do.

Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75 percent or more of a writer's labor goes into designing the story designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.