I haven't really written my plays and books - I've heard them. The stories are there already, singing in your genes and in your blood.

There is seldom a difficulty with religion where there is friendship.

It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.

For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.

Fred Astaire. Not a handsome man. He said himself he couldn't sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures. When you s Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth, from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That's the gospel truth. St. Fred. Fred the Redeemer.

It is very difficult to be a hero without an audience, although, in a sense, we are each the hero of a peculiar, half-ruined film called our life.

I knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but you can know that and not allow the thought in your head, at the front of your head. It dances around at the back, where it can't be controlled. But the front of the head is where the pain begins.