In Rome people spend most of their time having lunch. And they do it very well - Rome is unquestionably the lunch capital of the world.

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying.

I used to love to write. As a child I used to write all the time. I loved to write up until the second I got my first professional writing job. It turns out it's not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work.

There's also the idea in this country [USA], it's not wholly new, but it's new in its kind of purity, in that you have to be really smart to be really rich. I always say to people, the reason people believe this is a) they've never met a really smart person, and b) they've never met a really rich person. I have met both, and I cannot see the crossover. You do not have to be a genius to get rich. You have to be ruthless to get rich.

I believe that at birth everyone gets the capacity for a certain amount of drugs and alcohol, everyone the same, you can do it all between 15 and 19 like I did, or you can stretch it out over 70 years.

If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you've imagined. Venice is - Venice is better.

Children ask better questions than adults. "May I have a cookie?" "Why is the sky blue?" and "What does a cow say?" are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than "Where's your manuscript?" "Why haven't you called?" and "Who's your lawyer?"