The eleventh commandment of a motion picture negotiation: Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal.

I’ve always thought a novelist only has one character and that is himself or herself.

The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord.

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized

The point of a notebook is to jumpstart the mind.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient

Most business meetings involve one party elaborately suppressing a wish to shout at the other: 'just give us the money'.

Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.

It's sad to see these old buildings go because they have so many memories, and it's a real personal kind of thing when you play these places. It's part of our history just gone.

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

Only a vision - that is what one must have.

I just try to keep my dignity and carry on with my day.

Its typical of Mexico, of the whole human race perhaps — violence in favour of an ideal and then the ideal lost but the violence just going on.

Set your affection to infinity and your hate to zero!

In general I'm more attached to a cinema that tries not to replicate the real world and life.