I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies

Bermimpilah, karena Tuhan akan memeluk mimpi-mimpi itu.

Anything said is gone as soon as it leaves my lips. Things written down at least have a chance to leave a soft echo of what had been.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for no wind is the right wind.

Those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again. To teach to others what we know, and to try with what's left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life.

Feed the poor and get rich or feed the rich and get poor.

Stopping thought also involves shifting your values. Thought is stimulated by ideas that we have about life and the world.

Hi, folks, I'm Jerry Gross. No, I'm not, I'm Jerry Coleman.

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.

When I started on MySpace, people wanted to support me, but once I rose to fame with the MTV show, they felt like I had abandoned them for some reason, that I was too famous to talk to them anymore.