The worst thing about film, from my point of view, is that it cripples illusions which I have encouraged people to create in their heads. Film doesn't create illusion. It makes them impossible. It is a bullying form of reality, like the model rooms in the furniture department of Bloomingdale's.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.

The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

I asked this heroic pet lover how it felt to have died for a schnauzer named Teddy. Salvador Biagiani was philosophical. He said it sure beat dying for absolutely nothing in the Viet Nam War.

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky—as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.