“Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.”

“On radio and television, magazines and the movies, you can't tell what you're going to get. When you look at the comic page, you can usually depend on something acceptable by the entire family.”

“I'm blessed to have cool roles in these big movies.”

“Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.”

“I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?”

“You don't want to be photographed? You don't want to be known? Then you don't need to be out there peddling movies.”

“Everyone told me to pass on Speed because it was a 'bus movie.'”

“I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.”

“I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.”