“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

“The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.”

“Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.”

“If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”

“Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.”

“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.”

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”

“I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.”