I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.

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.

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

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.

Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it's a sin if you don't reach back... I'm telling you.

When people keep TALKING about you, don't waste time listening to what they say, keep WORKING on what you dream about.

We are not defined by the adversities in our lives, we are defined by how we manage them.

creativity is our only weapon against entropy

God desires to teach us how to submit to others and how to take the second place

How does one get help when they have no money~ or how does one get money when they have no help?

There's one thing about baldness - it's neat.

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.

It's quite funny that, 20 years ago, one would have thought putting out a fragrance would [negatively] affect your musical credibility. Now it may enhance it.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.