In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose faces appeared in such publications as Town and Queen could afford to eat in restaurants serving food which would leave them looking and feeling better instead of worse.

You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.

What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood.

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

I think the great trick of doing my sort of thing is to learn to use your downtime, and of course in the media and especially in television, there's a heck of a lot of time of waiting around. And I think the trick is to use that.

Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.