But if one could go back in time, I'd love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who's one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in 'Rio Bravo'.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture as the poet put it, but it stays with you like a good acid trip.

Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.

Somehow, as a writer, you tend to use words to paper over structural cracks.