Quotes from Joe Eszterhas

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.

Joe Lieberman frightens me. Why should we, an Hollywood voter, donate money to a man who threatens our creative freedom, our freedom of expression.

Politics has become entertainment.

Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.

I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.

Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.

I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.

Don't break your own heart.

Where could you go in Harrisonville?-this smalltime place haunted by by homilies, platitudes, and booshwah.

Sirens wailed; the revolution had come to Harrisonville. Blood was flowing on Pearl Street.

One man wrote War and Peace. Thirty-five screenwriters wrote The Flintstones.

John Correli: Did you kill Mr Boz, Miss Tramell? Catherine: I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the way I described in my book. I'd be announcing myself as the killer. I'm not stupid.

The terrible, diabolic thing with this disease is that you are always looking behind your shoulder every couple months with the most recent checkup to see whether there is any sign of it, and I thank God to say at this point there is not.

Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.

I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.

Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.

I haven't really spoken to God since I was a boy and I've rediscovered god and prayer in the process and all of that has come together.

From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.

I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.