A public role endures for the literary high-command, as sages and seers, speaking out on social and political issues.

I always consider every place worth exploring once- just in case there's a thirty foot flaming sign divulging the secret of life, that no one has told me about.

You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.

Stay cool, and wait for opportunity.

Few pleasures are greater than knowing you can close your door, ignore the world and create your own.

It's true, some senior Hungarian writers are not known for their laughter. There is a strong Germanic influence - an attitude that if it's enjoyable it can't possibly be literature.

The impossible lives next door to the possible; people ring its door bell by accident all the time.

Criticism is part of being in the marketplace. If you can't take a bit of criticism, you shouldn't bother publishing a book.

The greatest danger of being gifted, is that you may never learn how to make an effort.

Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

Ultimately, it's about the quality of the writing whatever style you are writing.

Neither humans nor the Gods that they have created are superior to old Mother Nature.

The hardest thing about getting what you want is knowing what to do with it.

One thing we knew for certain- despite all our certainties, it was very difficult to guess what one individual was thinking at any given moment.

The wonderful drama teacher at my high school, Barbara Patterson, saw me standing in the hall and told me I should audition for 'West Side Story.' I guess she thought I looked like a gang member.

I'm not a spy, which is the real question

Among Negroes it is a bad omen when someone knocks on the door of a house where a person has died.

I'm a nice middle-class girl in real life, and I'm a mom and a grandma, and I usually play sweet characters.

The typical mass murderer is extraordinarily ordinary.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

The most important thing is to write material that YOU think is funny. If you don't think it's funny, but you're convinced that other people will think it is, well they won't.