Brother, be a brother, fill this tiny cup of mine. And please, sir, make it whiskey: I have no head for wine!

Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They're a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.

I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.

If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.

That's what we [outsiders] feel America is really about - the kind of crazed ravings of the Christian right - when it's probably something quite different.

Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built out of longing great wonders have been willed they're only little tears darling let them spill and lay your head upon my shoulder.