The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

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.

Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

He became fubar in the classic way, which is to say that he was the victim of a temporary arrangement that became permanent.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

We were into the Speedway. We'd take a train out to the Speedway where farmers had flatbed trucks with bleachers on them. They'd park in the infield and we'd sit on those. Our heroes weren't the drivers, they were the pit crews. That's because we were local, and we knew what was going on.