[ Lady Susan novel by Jane Austen is] extremely difficult to adapt. I worked on it for years, for, like, ten years, before I started showing it to people. This was my back-burner project.

That's one of the things I find really bad, is when people not only do injuries to others, but then lie about the others to justify it. It's not bad enough just being bad to someone, but then lying about it.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

I originally wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but failed.

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.

I love watching the romantic comedies of the late '50s and early '60s. I used to have a rule that if Tony Randall's in it, it can't be bad.

In my father's time - he was in college during many transitions in the late 1930s - they had great institutional loyalties... to his college, eventually the navy, the Democratic Party and certain ideals of our country. Those are the things that became broken with my generation.