You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed-guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

People in small towns, much more than in cities, share a destiny.

I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.

Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. We need them to tell us. We need them to say, "I know you, Al. You are not the kind of man who.

I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.