I thought I was terrible [to play a cameo] and decided never to act again.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

I barely can go shopping for clothes. I find it difficult to walk into stores. The whole thing bores me so much.

People who don't like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that's how life is.

I can remember saying again and again and again, "A terrible thing has happened, but this should be a kind of wake-up call for our country, and we have a great opportunity now to reinvent ourselves. To rethink our position about oil and energy, to rethink our relationship with other cultures and other countries, and why other people want to attack us."

It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions.

[Lev] Tolstoy is not a boy-writer. He's a grown-up. And [Fedor] Doestoeivski is not a boy-writer.