Nothing's harder than writing. There's no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There's tremendous support - you've got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it's all you, and it's just crippling when people tear up your pages.

I think there's something about being a neophyte that's refreshing and hard to duplicate; it brings about real innovation. Innovation usually comes about through blind ignorance.

'Rocky' represents the optimistic side of life, and 'Rambo' represents purgatory.

I'm not a genetically superior person. I built my body.

For 'Rocky II,' I got a torn pectoral muscle, I got all beat up inside, I had to have an operation to splice things back together.

It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

I just fight in my movies, never in real life.