I work all day, morning and afternoon, just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.

The horror of being caged has lost its thrill.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.

When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.

Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.

In the midst of combat, we learned a great deal about mankind and its many different races, creeds and beliefs.

I just love musicians. They're not all super-happy all the time, but when they're playing they're happy, and it's such a beautiful thing.

I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?

I'm as voyeuristic and intrigued as the next person as to how celebrities live.

On all levels American society is rigged. I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. It cannot survive on this basis.

Absolute power demoralizes.

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.

After a lifetime of deep thought, I've decided that life is a distraction, but probably not from anything important.

I don't use specific brands really. It's just that for my skin, I need as high an SPF factor as I can get my hands on. That's the only rule.

But there is no obvious reason for holding that some normal adults are entitled to make choices for other normal adults, as paternalists of both left and right believe.