Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.

Eventually, life of the party is just like any other job. I've thought of myself that way at times, but it's sort of like holding everybody hostage. It diminishes everyone else. And ultimately, your friends don't require it of you.

What I really like is the marriage of both [writing and acting] - for instance, with Postcards. I don't actually act in it, but I worked on it with Mike [Nichols] as I went along, creating the character, so it was a bit like acting for me.

I did masses of opiates religiously.

I always wrote. I wrote from when I was 12. That was therapeutic for me in those days. I wrote things to get them out of feeling them, and onto paper. So writing in a way saved me, kept me company. I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know.

I quote fictional characters, because I'm a fictional character myself!

No motive is pure. No one is good or bad-but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.