You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.

The alcohol had the code and mystery about it as a writer's drug, but I'm glad that's been debunked. But the trouble with the drinking, much as I hate to admit it, is it helped the work.

Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you... they're a little away from you.

When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.