Fiction novels, that's my game.

With the movies, people are not going to wait around. The deadline is a deadline. In publishing it's more a polite suggestion.

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

The secret to winning a woman is calculated neglect.

The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye.

I'm just not a natural teacher.

I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the must absurd beauty.