“The good ideas will survive.”

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.

You can’t write poetry on the computer.

Something stopped me in school a little bit. Anything that I’m not interested in, I can’t even feign interest.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

One thing I don’t understand is that average American movie-goers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they’ll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours. Now, that is boredom at its most colossal.

I’ve always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do.

I don’t judge my characters, and that’s my job not to judge them. It’s my job to treat them with respect and to just look at it from their point of view.

My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

You don’t have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can’t help but make a good movie.

I steal from every movie ever made.

My parents said, Oh, he’s going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

If I’m doing my job right, then I’m not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I’m just jotting it down.

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

I don’t believe in putting in music as a band aid to get you over some rough parts or bad film making. If it’s there it’s got to add to it or take it to another level.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning.

He who spares the wicked injures the good.

Success in life is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is usually the result of experience. Experience is usually the result of bad judgment.

The goal is not to be perfect by the end. The goal is to be better today.

I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.