Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough. As you climb the ladder of success, be sure it's leaning against the right building. Eighty percent of success is showing up.

I could turn on my radio in the morning when I was getting dressed for school and hear Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and think this is the music. Now that music is art. Ellington is art. At that time it was just what you heard on the radio. Cole Porter was just a guy who wrote pretty songs and Billie Holliday would sing them.

I would never wanna belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.

Whosoever loveth wisdom is righteous, but he that keepeth company with fowl is weird.

When I naturally write a story and I feel that the guy is sitting across the table from the girl and flirting with her... I think, 'God, that can't be me' because I'm just too old for that part. You need a 30-year-old or a 35-year-old for that part. And so I've given myself less and less roles.

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.

Gauguin flew into a frenzy! He held my head under the X-ray machine for ten straight minutes and for several hours after I could not blink my eyes in unison." — "If The Impressionists Had Been Dentists