The movie I was working on, “Cleopatra”, it’s about how destructive a force love can be. But maybe that’s what every story is about.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we...

erhaps it was the difference in age between the countries—America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the...

My dreams tend to be either so obscure as to seem random, or so obviously connected to my subconscious that it’s embarrassing- as if even my hidden depths lack depth.

He considered it a shame when people couldn’t grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

Weren’t movies his generation’s faith anyway–its true religion? Wasn’t the theater our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral?…what...

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

Use beautiful to describe a sandwich, and the word means nothing.

Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.

And while his mother’s lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant–how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.

Among the world’s evils—fascism, ethnic cleansing, environmental degradation— smoking deserves the most severe curricular attention in my kid’s school.

Maybe it’s ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you’re alive for a while, and then you realize you’re going to die, and that’s such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers...

I have this theory, that this will be the only city that future archaeologists find, Las Vegas. The dry climate will preserve it all and teams of scientists in the year 5000 will carefully sweep...

What business does memory have with time?

He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

I don’t know what I expected – no maybe I do, Al Pacino from Scarface- but this drug dealer is more like Al Pacino at the beginning of The Godfather reasonably bemused, untouched by his...

(…) my money guy Richard is going without a tie now, like a politician who wants to appeal to the suffering common man (or perhaps every morning his firm takes the ties and shoelaces away...

(…) met the owner of this cozy book-and-candle Apt. G, a tall, leggy, striking girl named Bea or maybe just the letter B or maybe the insect Bee, not sure, her long blond hair pulled...

This is a love story, Michael Deane says. But, really, what isn’t? Doesn’t the detective love the mystery, or the chase, or the nosy female reporter, who is even now being held against her wishes...

I guess I forgot we were going out tonight.””We always go out on Fridays.””It’s Thursday, Alvis.””You are so tied to routine.