That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.

I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.

There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.

All has changed, thanks to Joe Eszterhas' life-threatening battle with throat cancer. He announced in "The New York Times" that he and Hollywood had blood on their hands and now Eszterhas is crusading to stop Hollywood's glamorization of smoking.

That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.