Refreshing honesty has been getting me in trouble since I was five, but it's probably had some positive effects - like not being a liar.

I never work until I have a deadline. You have to fit so much in a given day that you just don't get serious until you know when the deadline is.

Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.

Poetry died as a commercial form and then it died as a serious art form. No one serious touches it. It used to be that somebody like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make a high middle-class income from working as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post and other outlets. That doesn't happen anymore. It used to be that a legitimate playwright could make a living on Broadway from writing decent plays.

A criminal has a kind of freedom by definition that the ordinary citizen doesn't have. The criminal's able to realize himself in ways not available to the general population, if you want to put it that way. They're interesting and unpredictable. Characters always have to break some sort of bound or other to be interesting. It also helps if they're paradoxical.

I learned from Ridley [Scott] how to come out of the trailer at a fast walk and make your decisions and keep it going. We were very much on time and under budget, as they say. That was a very important thing for me and very satisfactory.

I never write with particular actors in mind.