When a child is born, I once explained to the kids, some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent.

The process hasn't changed, but the writer has developed. I still get up every morning and go to work.

A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.

I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence.

It is no more expected of most producers to read a book than it is, say, of Ted Williams to dust off home plate.

Edmonton is not the end of the world but you can certainly see it from there.

Wherever I travel I'm too late. The orgy has moved elsewhere.