Cinema, for me, has always been something like music composed with photographic images.

When a girl says she likes you as a friend, what she means is: "Rather than have sex with you, I would prefer to lose you as a friend."

We think of first love as sweet and valuable, a blessed if hazardous condition.

Here's how much I know about hockey. Mike Royko and I were in a tiny bar one winter night, and the radio kept reporting goals by the Blackhawks. I mentioned how frequently the team was scoring. 'You're listening to the highlights,' Royko observed.

By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.

Nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law.

Who was the real Hitchcock? I interviewed him once and haven't a clue.