They were very considerate, I must say. Every time I felt I was about to slip out of these fingers and would yell for help, they'd let me down and re-organize things.

When I'm in New York I look at the Empire State Building and feel as though it belongs to me ... or is it vice versa?

Sometimes I worked with just a background of a rock or a tree or black velvet, and just had to imagine the whole thing.

My children didn't when they were little because I thought that they had to be of a certain age. I hoped they liked me well enough not to want to see me in that sort of a spot.

Only in your imagination can you revise.

Recently, a six-year-old boy said to me, "I've been waiting to meet you for half my life."

Lillian Gish thought that there should be a cabinet position for the arts and I think she was right. I think she was right.

Juan Tripp was a friend. Good name for an airline man, huh? Juan Tripp after another?

Paul Lucas had a particularly amusing accent, so I chuckled. That was terrible; I shouldn't have done that, but he took it too big. He got up and said he couldn't work with people who laughed at him!

I went to Washington to ask for a little residual payment for the people who had written films in the early, early days, people who never got any residuals on tapes or anything at all.

As far as advice, that will be in my next book, my next collection. I certainly never like to instruct anyone, but just say as I feel. That's the same as advice, isn't it?

By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.

Too often we want to take stands to elevate us rather than elevate a cause.

The proportion between the velocity with which men or animals move, and the weights they carry, is a matter of considerable importance, particularly in military affairs.

Today is the yesterday you won't remember tomorrow.

Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use. The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential.

The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others lives unblest!

That which one fears becomes one's master.

"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

Be fearful when the markets get greedy, be greedy when the markets get fearful.