New York waiters, probably the surliest in the Western world . . . are better images of their city than that journalistic favorite the taxi driver.

The country is laid out in a haphazard, sloppy fashion, offensive to the tidy, organized mind.

I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage.

You can never win as a sight-seer. Somebody else, more often than not the first person you meet when you get back home, has been there before you.

Violence is the repartee of the illiterate

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

Often fear is the same emotion as excitement. It means you are breaking ground.

... success always worries academics, when it moves into the popular world.

Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened.

We're rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured. But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data.

Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.

The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.

Genius is fostered by industry.

Hush," he said. "I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down?

My thesis in terms of all my art is finding the beauty in the ugly truth. Just find the beauty in realism and what's there.