When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.

Curiosity, that's what kills us. Not muggers or all that bullshit about the ozone layer. It's our own hearts and minds.

Culturally speaking, I was raised in a Jewish household. In addition to the religious side of it, I was taught respect for books and learning and the higher professions like medicine and law and teaching.

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night.

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.