People with honorary awards are looked upon with disfavor. Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your brand-new Mercedes?

[When you write a play] you walk into a forest without a knife, without a compass. But . . . if you have a sense of geography, you find that you're clearing a path and getting to the right place.

How long do you want to wait until you start enjoying life? When you're sixty-five you get social security.

He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.

Baptists are only funny underwater.

Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity.

I don't like losing the words, as you have to, when I'm asked to turn a play into a movie. It's not a matter of ego . . . I'm just better able to create the character for an audience through words rather than through actions.