A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.

We do not judge great art. It judges us.

... passion, once unleashed, has a way of unleashing other passions -- a principle adhered to as firmly by the police force of any large modern city as by the Greek tragedians.

A first book often has enough material in it for half a dozen.

It was strange how you could never form any conclusion from what women said. It was not that they did not know what they were talking about, but you never drew the right conclusions.

For small business people, less paperwork means higher profits, boosted sales and more time with the family.

I was a federal public defender during the most important years of the drug war. I saw people go to jail for nothing, and go to jail for a long time.

At 60 the sexual preoccupation, when it hits you, seems sometimes sharper, as if it were an elderly malady, like gout.

Religion makes good people better and bad people worse.

You gotta improvise in life. You gotta improv if the police pull you over.

Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.

The greatest revelation is stillness.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

To book commercials, you do something to get to a callback, and once you get to the callback, you've got three minutes to get the people to want to hang out with you for a day.

I always hang up my own dresses. It is a good lesson in appreciation and in always remembering that you're part of a team, not outside of the team, but with the team and on the team.