People will like you who never met you, they think you're absolutely wonderful; and then people also will hate you, for reasons that have nothing to do with any real experience with you. People don't want to lose their enemies. We have favorite enemies, people we love to hate and we hate to love. If they do something good, we don't like it. I found myself doing that with Ronald Reagan. He is anathema to me. If he does something that's reasonable, I find my mind trying to find some way to interpret it so that it's not reasonable, so that somewhere it's jingoist extremism.

Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.

An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

If the expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.

Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.

The four pillars of wisdom that support journalistic endeavors are: lies, stupidity, money-grubbing, and ethical irresponsibility.

If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It's the ultimate hustle.