In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.

Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

Bad acting comes in many bags, various odors. It can be performed by cardboard refugees from an Ed Wood movie, reciting their dialogue off an eye chart, or by hopped-up pros looking to punch a hole through the fourth wall from pure ballistic force of personality, like Joe Pesci in a bad mood. I can respect bad acting that owns its own style.

Telling writers to shut up is a sure way to keep them talking.

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.