Where exactly do you put your hands on somebody who hurts everywhere?

Really, I think among the many mistakes I've made over my life, one of them was caring so much about the short story.

Behind each piece, animating every attempt, is the echo of a precarious faith, that we are more intimately bound to one another by our kindred doubts than our brave conclusions.

I have lots of fiction in the drawer, but the essays I mostly kick out into the world, ready or not. Fiction incubates differently, I suppose.

Folks double my age and older often run down a conversation tracking a vanishing world that will, with the passing of their memory, vanish entirely.

If someone gives you tough situation, it's better to make a distance.

99% of all problems can be solved by money -- and for the other 1% there's alcohol.

This was never about the money... Don't you understand? A world without good art is a far more dangerous place than one you don't get paid for making it in.

Psychic perception is a much more efficient and accurate method of seeing and knowing reality.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

Like in [the 1950s] if you wanted to ruin someone´s career in Hollywood you claimed he was a Communist. Nowadays, you want to ruin someone´s career in Hollywood, you claim they are Republican.

I want to own an NFL franchise. I understand the business of football.

I love involving actors at all levels - and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.

The current situation in Iraq is ultimately a crisis of governance, which has allowed extremist groups to take advantage of disillusioned segments of the Iraqi population.

There was no script, but I said, 'I'm in, regardless' and was committed to Legends before I saw a single page.It was a lovely surprise to find so much meat on the bone.