[on writing Cat Ballou (1965)] That was the beginning of all of our careers . . . I was the 11th writer on that, but they'd all been trying to do it straight, like a Gene Autry singing movie. Walter Newman, who was the writer on it before me, had the inspiration to do it as a comedy, but he was fed up with the whole damn thing, so he sketched it as a comedy. Then he quit, and that was my opportunity to come in and pick up where Walter left off. He just gave me such a gift because he showed how to do it as a comedy, and all I had to do was follow in his footsteps. It was extraordinary.

[on the famous "What we have is a failure to communicate" line from Cool Hand Luke (1967)] The phrase just sort of appeared on the page. I looked at it and thought, "Now that's interesting". Then I thought, "These words are going to be spoken by an actor who is playing a real redneck character who probably never went beyond high school", and it has a faintly academic feel to it, that line. I thought, "People are going to question it".

One of the few things I've discovered about writing is to form a habit that becomes an addiction, so that if you don't put something down on paper every day you get really mean and awful with withdrawal symptoms, and your wife and your dog and your kids are going to kick your ass until you get back to it, because they can't bear you in that state of mind.

A film set, as Orson Welles was first to say, is the most wonderful electric train a boy could ever be given. What he failed to add was that, most of the time, it doesn't work.