Novelists who get shitty about screenwriting invariably can't do it, or they can't hack it in the world of what's really, in truth, very bold and very public enterprise.

When I'm shooting, as much as writing, I see edited footage in my mind, so I work that way, and it's economical.

You know a shooter when you see it. At least the creative people do. If a picture isn't obvious in the first draft you're kind of screwed.

I sound like Warhol but only because I'm tired.

I'm usually the first guy to propose a change because I'm continuing my process. We're in a context, in this business, a context in which most screenplays work on a very modest level of achievement, in that a lot of them aren't really written by what you would call writers.

Without English art, I never would have understood myself, my own family, or the New England world I lived in.

I have a lot of stuff that I never published because I always had a sense that novels were not finally going to be the way I made my living, because the form was dying commercially.