Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else

The service took place on one of those afternoons that occur only in the past.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

Humanism inspires a lot of enthusiasm for everyday life and urges people to be better to one another, to work towards a better future and a common good. If I believed there was an afterlife I would have so much less motive for filling this life with every experience that is offered up to me.

Stupid people like to delude themselves that while they may not be clever, they were at least able to compensate with feelings and insights denied to the intellectual....It was precisely this kind of false belief that made stupid people so stupid. The truth was the clever people had infinitely more resources from which to make the leaps of connection that the world called intuition. What was 'intelligence' after all, but the ability to read into things?

My parents were marvelously educated people.

There is something in the American project, something in simple American oratory, something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar and my heart leap with optimism and belief. If only they understood how to make a cup of tea.