Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.

I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers."

For about 150 days a year in Venice, the sun doesn't show through the mist until noon.

We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

Comic strips introduced me to metaphors. They are pure metaphor, so you learn how to tell a story with symbols, which is a very valuable thing to learn. And I learned that from motion pictures, too, and from poetry. Poetry is mainly metaphor. If it doesn't have a metaphor, it doesn't work.

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.