In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

Emmies, for example, most of that's bullshit. Oscars are even worse. We have a strange, terrible affliction in this town. Everybody walks around bent-backed from slapping each other on the backs so much. It looks like arthritis but it isn't. It's hunger for recognition. And it's sort of like, well, I'll scratch you this time if you'll scratch me next time. That kind of thing.

How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete.

(on being born on Christmas Day, 1924) I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.

If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it'll sound good when an actor's saying it.

I'd love to be able to write an in-depth piece of what causes men like [Richard] Nixon and [H.R.]Haldeman and [John] Ehrlichman and all the rest of them not only to run, but what causes us to vote for them.