In eleven or twelve years of writing, Mike, I can lay claim to at least this: I have never written beneath myself. I have never written anything that I didn't want my name attached to. I have probed deeper in some scripts and I've been more successful in some than others. But all of them that have been on, you know, I'll take my lick. They're mine and that's the way I wanted them.

I find dictating in the mass media particularly good because you're writing for voice anyway; you're writing for people to say a line and, consequently, saying a line through a machine is quite a valid test for the validity of what you're saying.

The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.

Bias and prejudice make me angry...more than anything.

If you write beautifully, you write beautifully, that's all.

If you have the temerity to try to dramatize a theme that involves any particular social controversy currently extant. . . then you're in deep trouble.