I was born in Queens, New York, which is a suburb of New York City.

My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way.

We were just a gaggle of kids, and everybody played together and had a good time. You know how kids can be completely horrible; abusive but fun. But anyway, it was a nice childhood.

I studied with the idea of becoming a Catholic priest.

So when I was 13, I basically left home and never returned and lived at home again. I would come home for a week at Christmas and two weeks in the summer only.

Like I said on my bio on my webpage, I was born at an early age, I was close to my mother.

I was unwilling to - without getting too philosophical about it - I was unwilling to structure my spirituality in the way that the church wanted me to structure it.

I was born in New York.

Because supposedly those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

The map is more interesting than the territory.

It is bad enough when rich Christians show little concern for the poor, but when they moan about their lot, they show contempt not only for the poor but also for the generosity of God.

I demanded more rights for women because I know what women had to put up with.

People always - when you rise, whenever you're getting to a point where you're a very big band, which is a very rare thing, there are always going to be people that aren't going to like you.

Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out

The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out of a proper method to catch the reader's eye; without which, a good thing may pass over unobserved, or lost among commissions of bankrupt.

I'd always loved movies, but it wasn't some sort of desperate love of celluloid. It was literally like, "I want to write things, and I want people to see them more."