Coke didn't last long enough; it gave me a hangover for two weeks for being high for ten minutes.

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it.

My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore!

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it.

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.