When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

People who get on at school are the ones who play by the rules, and no one's going to get far in later life playing by the system.

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.

You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it.

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming people we really are.'

It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work.

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

. . . when my family headed out west, like any birth canal Rochester was forgotten.

I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.

For me black is not dark, it's poetic. I don't think of gothic I think of classic - it's a big difference.

I just want to make good movies. Honestly, the only difference for me with this stuff is that there is more people on the set.

Some one has said that we are moving so fast that when plans are being made to perform some great feat, these plans are broken into by a youth who enters and says, “I have done it."

No doubt, in complete abstraction one has a feeling of a great shock, if not an explosion, and in approaching the real, one feels health and truth restored.

That's Hendrick's 19th home run. One more and he reaches double figures.

Clean your freakin' fryer. Be responsible for Christ's sake!

You really have to keep people interested, at all times, until the punch comes. You can do that with a film that lasts 90 to 100 minutes. That's very difficult to do at 160 minutes.

All my friends are talented enough to get nominated for awards. I just am always surprised when things and people I like are also liked by things like the Oscars.