I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior

I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.