I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.

You must always assume that the relationship between writer and producer is that of adversaries - however you slice it. They may be your dearest friends, and they'll invite you to dinner, but when all the smoke clears and the ozone lifts, your enemy is the producer, that's the guy you're competing with, and you have to battle him, just as if you were an adversary.

The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.

In eleven or twelve years of writing, Mike, I can lay claim to at least this: I have never written beneath myself. I have never written anything that I didn't want my name attached to. I have probed deeper in some scripts and I've been more successful in some than others. But all of them that have been on, you know, I'll take my lick. They're mine and that's the way I wanted them.

The tendency when you dictate is to overwrite, because you're not counting pages, you don't really know what the hell the page count is.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!

I remember the first sale I made was a hundred and fifty dollars for a radio script, and, as poor as I was, I didn't cash the check for three months. I kept showing it to people.