There is nothing like tasting the grit of fear for rediscovering that the umbilical cord is made of piano wire.

Nobody bores any man as much as an unhappy female.

Boredom is the keynote of poverty — of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with — for where there is no money there is no change of any kind, not of scene or of routine. To be able to break out of its dark brown sameness.

I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

Without vanity a writer's work is tepid, and he must accept his vanity as part of his stock in trade and live with it as one of the hazards of his profession.

I have always understood the unbelieving look in the eyes of those whom success touches early - it is a look half fearful, as though the dream were still in the process of being dreamed and to move or to speak would shatter it.