Writing a screenplay today, unless you are directing it, is like putting a meal in the middle of a forest. Every kind of animal is going to come up and fight over it-grab food, throw food, crap on the plate. That meal is so destroyed by the time everyone has had his or her way with it, you're lucky if you see forty percent of that film.

[on being a Hollywood screenwriter during the "auteur" period in the 1970s] "You never knew if you were going to work, or if your work was going to get produced. Directors never committed to the talent or the writer, rather they committed to keeping the deal alive. That's when you began to see scripts with six, seven, nine, or ten scriptwriters. The 'original story by', written by a single writer, was rewritten by three writers who were never in the same room. Then the script was rewritten by five other writers."

[on the Writer's Guild] "We are not a union of writers. We are a union of rewriters. They never, never found a way of protecting an original screenplay the way the Dramatists Guild protects its playwrights and the Authors League protects its published authors. In those organizations the word begins and ends with the writer, but not so in Hollywood."

Forms can be taught. Passion, you have to come up with. Imagination, nobody can teach that. Life experience, nobody can teach that. That's yours. That's your gift. Idea is what you bring to it, the intention.

[on writing] "The most potent force in film is storytelling. The most potent force in history is the human voice. You must trust your voice, utilize it in a variety of media. It is the greatest gift to humanity to tell people who they are, where they are coming from, and where they are going."

I became very aware quite young of a multiplicity of worlds and what was particularly fascinating to me was a very strong memory of southern Europe, particularly the Mediterranean basin. And when I moved to Rome, it was like being home again. There were experiences and places that had such an intense familiarity that I recognized them from previous existences.

I had had nine contracts to direct something I had written, but for a variety of reasons they never came through. Either I walked away because it didn't contain the elements I wanted, or the producer found me unbearable, or we lost the money.

Kae and I love to write together. I find that we just turn each other on. Her imagination is so rich and so crazy and so much fun. She's far more scientific than I am, so she'll take an idea and go to the craziest places with it.

[on his directorial debut] "One of the reasons I did this is to show that you can make a film with little money, and that it can be beautiful. The film actually is very pretty, the cast is extraordinary-looking, the ambiance is very mysterious and magical, and it didn't cost a fortune to do."

I've been paid to write 42 films and nine have been made, and I have never been satisfied with the direction of a majority of them, except for George Roy Hill's direction of Slaughterhouse-Five (1972). The rest of the time I found that I was brighter than most directors, actually knew more about film, and cared more about film. And so this time, I knew I was going to make this movie.