The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.

Discount my partiality, but my report is that so far The Winds of War is looking good.

This is an excellent martini — sort of tastes like it isn't there at all, just a cold cloud.

Some people think that all the equipment you need to discuss religion is a mouth.

The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work.

I felt there's a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I'd be a jerk not to take advantage of it.

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.

The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.

This life is slow suicide, unless you read.

Lead by example, not by instruction.

The tasteof rain-- Why kneel?

At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

You know, if I tell the press that I like long blonde hair, the next day there will be girls with long hair wigs outside waiting for me.

History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard.

I always wanted to play the boyfriends of doomed girls.

To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life.

To achieve vital harmony in a picture it must be constructed out of parts in themselves incomplete, brought into harmony only at the last stroke.

When you make a record and have to go out on tour for it, you have to go out on tour for it. Whether it's going to be joyful or not, you have to do it.