Quotes

On Hunter's Blood (1986): I didn't want to be involved in that. It was a small production, just a little thing that they were going to go off and do, and I said 'go ahead and do it. I was writing a picture for Fox at the time. I didn't really have time to deal with it.

I worked really hard learning to write novels; seven-and-a-half years. I wrote six novels before I sold the first one.

Writing is the only work that love to do. My approach has always been to avoid anything and anyone that would make me hate writing.

I've found screenwriting to be a very pure form, very tight. You look at a screenplay, and it looks so easy to do, and that's what so hard about it.

Hollywood is all about risk-taking. If you're not a risk-taker, you shouldn't be out here, because you'll lose your mind.

I'm a redneck from Tennessee, if I can come out here and survive, that should encourage a lot of other people.

Everybody from investors on Wall Street to the studio heads with their various projects are involved in risk-taking, but the only person who can generate his own projects is a writer-so there is no better game to play (if you're a writer) than the Hollywood game.

I've probably had eight or ten things optioned, and only one has been produced, The Last of the Finest (1990), which was an Orion picture, and I executive-produced that also.

You rise or fall on your own energy, your own initiative, your own talent. And the rewards are commensurate with the risks, in my opinion.

[on writing spec scripts]: It's just like it is with novels, really-you write something hoping someone (a publisher) will be interested, you take the risk.