Writing books isn't a drastic departure from writing for the stage.

I had run away from home three times. I had been kicked out of three different schools under different circumstances. I was kicked out of everything that I didn't quit. Kicked out of schools. Kicked out of summer camp, the Boy Scouts, the altar boys, the choir, and something else that I can't think of, that I'm proud of. Anyway, that was my pattern. I just began to invent myself early in life, and went out and did something about it.

When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning.

Somehow I enjoy watching people suffer.

There was about a two-year period at the end of the '60s, when I realized I was in the wrong place and entertaining the wrong people with the wrong material and that I was not being true to myself. I went through a metamorphosis into something more authentic for me, a more authentic stage voice and writing voice.

[On School Uniforms] Don't these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It's not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.