Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays.

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies

Somebody is observing my writings, I know that.That's one reason why I keep reading and writing.

There's something specificabout the doves' wayof living my lifeas a natural result of today since it's raining

They call what we went through a problem, an experience, a dream… but we know that it’s much more than that.

Sitting out of politics isn't really an option if you don't want things to slide.

Any religion is a perspective upon existence.

Democrats - always standing up for what they later realize they should have believed in.

It's not in the dreaming, it's in the doing.

The opportunity for greater courage comes in the most ordinary of moments.

I know for certain that miracles happen, but only for those who hang on to hope.

Now, I'm getting a little older, got more responsibility, I don't need to be depressed.