I hope that when the characters in my novels dream beyond their current circumstance, it inspires the reader to do the same.

I am not an ornithologist—I am a bird.

The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread.

"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."

The goal is partly the enjoyment; it doesn't come later, but within the very process of the struggle.

I sit around too much, waiting for other people to do stuff and angsting about stuff they've done, without doing anything myself.

That's the dream. Being on the U.S. National team and winning the World Cup. I'll take the win anyway I can get it.

There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.

Violence is a form of cinematic entertainment. Asking me about violence is like going up to Vincente Minnelli and asking him to justify his musical sequences.

Travel is intensified living … and one of the last great sources of legal adventure.

If mankind were born tomorrow it would divide into groups; each would scramble to invent their one and only god, and set about butchering each-other.