Insider can be more ludicrous. How did I ever end up [as one]? Carsick [Waters's book on hitchhiking] was on the New York Times best-seller list for five weeks. [One of the characters was] a singing asshole that does a duet with Connie Francis! Times have changed. That's mainstream, in a weird way.

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?

I probably would have made [films] anywhere. Every city has something they're ashamed of. I would have made films about it and turned it into something positive.

God knows if you could start a new sex act that's more important than making a good movie.

When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I'm for insiders.

I want to be harder to reach, not easier.

I came from a generation where women were almost deified, and like Groucho Marx's line, "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member", I thought, "I wouldn't want to sleep with a woman who would sleep with me!" It took me a long time to work my way through that.