I should have known something was wrong with my first wife. When I brought her home to meet my parents, they approved of her.

I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back.

It's hard for me to know. I'll think, 'I really brought off my ideas, it's great,' and no one sparks to it

If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

I write the script; nobody sees it, not the people that put the money in the picture. I cast who I want, and make the film. That's why I've always felt the only thing standing between me and greatness, is me. There's no excuse for me not to be great except that I'm not.

One man starving puts a crimp in my evening.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead.