If you believe in an idea, you don't own you, it owns you.

I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

But nothing seems to do any good.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.