Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz.

My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.

Why not? Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain - and this is a chance for something special.

My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.

I am an only child. I have one sister.

I don't believe in God. Just try getting a plumber on the weekend.

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.