My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape, yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It's quite embarrassing, it's quite unpleasant, it's quite awkward.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

It's obviously a characteristic of human beings that we like to feel superior to others, but our problem is we are not superior

Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

Even with my wife, I find sharing soup is hard.

I have been vain since birth.

Sleep: a poor substitute for caffeine!

I spend most of my time thinking about things like laundry and buying stationery supplies.

I'm not proud to be me, I'm not excited to be me, but I find that I am me, and like most other individuals, I send out little signals; I tell everyone else how everything looks from where I am.

Patriotism is considered to be an emotion a person ought to feel. But why? Why is it nobler to love your own country than to love someone else's?

I was making my living from a joke about my appearance that I didn't understand, and in a way still don't, because when I look in a mirror it doesn't seem funny to me.

God wants you to always have a hunger in your heart to learn something new.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can’t reason without them.

You only have one chance for a first impression.

I'm a plain soap kind of guy.

The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.

If Thomas Edison had gone to business school, we would all be reading by larger candles.

If we look at the realm of knowledge, how exceedingly small and limited is that part acquired through our own senses; how wide is that we gain from other sources.

Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.

I like to relish words and sentences, and phraseology, and there's not much facility for that [playing Maigret].

Women have a very good sense for seeing instantly what constitutes a good man. Not physically. The physical strength is only a small side of it.