I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time. [Using marijuana] made the difference between staying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast.

You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain.

I can't tell you how many times at the breakfast table my dad would curse out Franklin Roosevelt. I love my father. He was an intelligent man, but he really didn't like regulations of the Roosevelt style, or the taxes. He was an Dwight Eisenhower man. And that's what Eisenhower did, committed to breaking down the program.

I do have a side as a citizen, and I've always expressed it, and that's where I've gotten into misunderstandings, because some people see me as a leftist nut or whatever. A conspiracy nut. All that stuff. These are definitions that don't really apply to a dramatist, because a dramatist is working from empathy.

The second [presidential] term changes, and I think that John F. Kennedy certainly ran on that and he knew that second term would give him oxygen, and he needed it. Unfortunately, he didn't get there.

I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush.

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America.