I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time.

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it -- every, every minute?

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Some poems are written great, some poems are written swell. But then there are poems that could win a prize in Hell.

Never put your business in the hands of one person or a select few. People leave. People die. People forget.

Romanticism implies nostalgia for damaged goods.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

In the end it may well be that Britain will be honored by the historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

Hope cherishes no illusions, nor does it yield to cynicism.

There's this freshness that happens within the first few takes of the actors actually listening to each other and actually really reacting.

Experience is something you get when you don't really want it.

I am haunted by interrupted acts, introspective as a leper, enchanted by a repulsive clew, a gross and fugitive movement of the limbs. Is this the love that shook the lights to flame?

I'm in favor of any technology that makes my work available to the reading public at a reasonable price.