The people you have to lie to, own you. The things you have to lie about, own you.

I never get my creativity flowing. I'm a pro, this is how I earn my living. If it don't flow, I don't eat.

I always thought Cyrano De Bergerac was a coward. He could fight a hundred swordsmen, but he was afraid of his nose, and he was afraid of Roxanne. Jam as cowardly as anybody about facing my fears. So, you spend your you years as an artist fighting those hundred people that you happen not to fear. Then you wake up one morning and realize all this time you're afraid of your nose. That's what you're going to have to face for the rest of your life. And you don't feel very courageous. But, if you don't face it, you dry up as an artist.

The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it's broadcast) is this: it allows you to know that your task is larger than yourself. If you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person, you are entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark, crazy time-preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself.

To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.

There are writers I know and respect who are very good about what's outside, and not too hot about what's inside.

We have a culture that is indirect in the extreme, where by the time you're five years old, you've watched tons of television, and have been subjected to what I call "the age of interruption," where everything is interrupted every minute. We have constant input from TV, computers, fax machines, telephones, etc. It's very hard for a modern American to have two hours of uninterrupted time. I know how it is because I insist on several hours of uninterrupted time each day, and I know how ruthless I have to be to get it.