“If you want to make a movie, make it. Don’t wait for a grant, don’t wait for the perfect circumstances, just make it.”

I am a writer, I deal in words. There is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all communication.

I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.

I’m basically like, you know, learned pretty quickly the guy who throws the first punch usually wins, so when people gave me a hard time I just punched them.

One can be inclined to just say, “F this political correctness! I don’t have time for that!”

All my movies are achingly personal.

I am not going to tell you how I believe, but I do believe in God.

There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good screenplay people are going to respond to it.

I’m very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I’ve never really considered myself a writer.

You name any horrific thing, and I can make a joke out of it.

If there is something magic about the collaborations I have with actors it’s because I put the character first.

That’s how it always is with me: the thing that sets me down to start writing is usually not what I end up doing. Because, as much as I love genre, and I try to deliver the goods, I go off from it. I go do my own thing.

Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and clever, then it’s great. That’s what you want.

Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way.

If I’ve made it a little easier for artists to work in violence, great! I’ve accomplished something.

When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.

Just because you are a character doesn’t mean you have character.

Well, when you write about people of a certain age we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.

Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

When you cannot rejoice in feelings, circumstances or conditions, rejoice in the Lord.

The changeful change of circumstances. [Lat., Varia sors rerum.]

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one’s own human failing.

In all circumstances, I always look for the light and build around it, with little memory of pain.