I met The Beatles and Stones at the same time, because Michael Cooper was doing several of their album covers.

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

I'm not interested in attacking, I'm interested in astonishing.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

There is no power on earth that can loosen a man's grip on his own throat

In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.

You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way.

When I finally made it to the set, I spent a lot of time doing damage control on The Magic Christian.

After Strangelove I also started work on an adaptation of The Collector.

Peter Beard is one of those people I've known a long time. We have an affinity. We share certain values.

All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.

Kiss me with love like a butterfly kisses flowers to find and taste the nectar of life.

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

At the heart of leadership is the leader's relationship with followers. People will entrust their hopes and dreams to another person only if they think the other is a reliable vessel.

At the beginning and the middle and the end of all things, there is only the perfection of enlightenment that is nirvana.

I think the answer has to do with the fact that [Louis D.] Brandeis was a consistent critic of bigness in business and in government.

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.

The way they dress here (California), your head is always in the stands. All those bikinis, your eyes get tired.

But once the person is selected, at that point that person is independent.

Art is right reason in the doing of work.