Years ago, I heard an interview with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The interviewer said, "Do you still practice?" And he said, "I practice every day." He said, "If I skip a day, I can hear it. If I skip two days, the conductor can hear it. And if I skip three days, the audience can hear it." Oh, yes, you have to keep that muscle firm.

If your subject is crime, then you know at least that you're going to have a real story. If your subject is the maturing of a college boy, you may never stumble across a story while you're telling that. But if your story is a college boy dead in his dorm room, you know there's a story in there, someplace.

I don't think I would have been a good architect. Really, I have thought about this from time to time, and I might have wound up like my father, who never did find that which he could devote his life to. He sort of drifted from job to job. He was a traveling salesman, he was a bookkeeper, he was an office manager, he was here, there, there. And however enthusiastic he was at the beginning, his job would bore him. If I hadn't had the writing, I think I might have replicated what he was doing, which would not have been good.

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?

When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

Writing is flat, so if you only have part of one eye working, you still can do the job. It's just that you sit there and you're angry, which doesn't help.