Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

In a more universal sense, we only get one thing. You know...a head stone if we're lucky; if not, green grass.

You are thirty minutes late." "Yes." "Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?" "No." "Why not, pray tell?" "Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.

That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

when the phone rings I too would like to hear words that might ease some of this.

That was all a man needed: hope. It was lack of hope that discouraged a man.

If I'm an ass, I should say so. If I don't, somebody else will. If I say it first, that disarms them.