He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next

... humanity deserved to die horribly, since it had behaved so cruelly and wastefully on a planet so sweet.

No one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

A man without a home can't be lost.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

I paraphrase Aristotle: If you want to be comical, write about people to whom the audience can feel superior; if you want to be tragical, write about at least one person to whom the audience is bound to feel inferior, and no fair having human problems solved by dumb luck or heavenly intervention.