I work seven days a week and I work about 12 hours a day, from the beginning of September to about the end of May; the school year. I take two days off, Christmas and New Year's, Thanksgiving sometimes - two and a half. And the result is that I bonded myself to my desk.

When you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong.

Olivier was another case of a genius, who couldn't understand why anybody would have any trouble doing this, because for him it came so easily.

I was originally going to be a lawyer, and the only thing I remember from the art of cross-examination is - you can see this one coming up Sixth Avenue - never ask a question the answer to which you do not know.

If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I must confess that when I'm alone in my study, here in New York, writing; that's when I'm happy.

I stopped writing at the age of 18. I had written incessantly before that. I read, of course, because I was in university, but I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to do any of those dangerous things. I was going to be a stolid, bourgeois lawyer.