I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

Madness, and then illumination.

There is a lesson to be learned from everyone you meet

My hope and treasure lies above

Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph.

Love is everything. Without it, I have no use for this world. When I'm not in love with someone, I feel empty and I can't think about anything but trying to find that someone.

For awhile, I thought that was love. -Gaara

People say that jealousy is the greatest enemy of love. They’re wrong. The greatest enemy of love is boredom.

I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.

You kill me and I'll see that you never work in this town again.

Exposing something that's painful or raw or not so pleasant. That seems to be the dramatic motor of documentaries, exposure.