Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.

I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

All my brothers, my brothers-in-law, they're always telling me what a good-hearted guy I am. You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain.

Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.

I'm a human being, god-dammit. My life has value!