Terry Kitchen asked me one time why, since I had so few gifts as a husband and father, I had gotten married. And I heard myself say: "That's the way the post-war movie goes.

Somebody realized, hey, students are printing dummy ads and dummy news stories, why don't they really print something. So there was the Shortridge Daily Echo, and a hell of a lot of writers have come out of Shortridge on that account. The head writer of the I Love Lucy show, Madelyn Pugh, was a schoolmate of mine. Dan Wakefield. Writing was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Don't be reckless with other peoples hearts. And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly," said man. "Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away.

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

He had supposed for years that he had no secrets from himself. Here was proof that he had a great big secret somewhere inside, and he could not imagine what it was.

Everything of mine which has been filmed so far has been one character short, and that character is me.