We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.

I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.