Poetry died as a commercial form and then it died as a serious art form. No one serious touches it. It used to be that somebody like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make a high middle-class income from working as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post and other outlets. That doesn't happen anymore. It used to be that a legitimate playwright could make a living on Broadway from writing decent plays.

I think probably everybody works most on the beginning and the ending.

My gratitude to Ridley [Scott] isn't anything new. I named one of my kids after him. But he's a very important person to me.

Refreshing honesty has been getting me in trouble since I was five, but it's probably had some positive effects - like not being a liar.

You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it lies with the teller, not the tale.

Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

In Boston terms I was everyone and no one, with no social investment, no social insecurity, sort of Imitation of Christ in one hand and The Education of Henry Adams in the other, and because I was part of nothing I could observe everything without having anything personal invested in the findings.