I was very skeptical when he began, and there have been moments where I think he's shown absolute leadership, and I think the jury is out, still out. I haven't made any final decisions on him, but I've been surprised at times. I agree with him about one thing absolutely - George W. Bush said recently that he believed in prayer and exercise. So do I.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bill Clinton will stop smoking cigars, will never smoke them again, as a result of what he did with that cigar.

I always try to do true endings and that's where I got into trouble always because Hollywood wants to do happy endings.

Assuming that all bad girls smoke. I don't think so. I've been around a lot of bad girls who don't smoke, you know, so I think it's easy to put a cigarette into, you know, into anyone's hands and say, well that makes them a bad boy or a bad girl. There are many more creative ways from a writerly point of view to do that.

I started making a point earlier that women's cancer rates are skyrocketing, and we have some women movie stars, young women movie stars, who are smoking in many of their movies.

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.

Joe Lieberman was threatening censorship. What I'm arguing is that if the creative people in Hollywood themselves have a responsibility, have a moral responsibility in terms of smoking, not to show smoking in movies.