BBC had tried to develop the book, set in England, as a two-hour movie. I went to a meeting and they said, "Look at this," and I thought the book was outstanding. I was like, "Can I do this?"

It seems to me that religion is losing momentum and God is making a comeback.

He seems to be attracting religions the way a dog attracts fleas.

One of the advantages of real worth is that menial tasks can always be left to someone else.

If people thought more, we'd all have less to amuse us.

I love what I do, but I never want to OD on celebrity.

Ha! Easy for nuns to talk about giving up things. That's what they do for a living.

If you're a kid wanting to be a cartoonist today, and you're looking at Family Guy, you don't have to aim very high.

Noone's a leader if there are no followers.

The imagination conjures gifts; what the ungrateful, unsentimental part of the mind has to do is to unwrap them, find fault with them, see them for what they are and then alter them.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.