I think the toughest thing about being an actor in a film is to be with a director who doesn't know what they want. And that can be really, really frustrating.

My father was the Formica King of Long Island, and my mother was the daughter of a Bengal Lancer in India.

That's one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I'm very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.

Once you get into the era of the printed book, it gets a little easier. After years and years, you make a serious survey of that literature, and then you make it more specific depending on what kind of case appears. I never set out to collect material on cheating at bowling, but I found out that after 20 years, I had a lot of material on cheating at bowling.

Writing is the only thing in my life that doesn't get easier. It just doesn't.

I suppose that if I could only do one thing, a solid card effect would be pretty high on the list. That's the root of it all, sleight-of-hand. It's certainly the thing I feel most comfortable with.

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.