I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

Failure is a signpost on the trail to success

I want to have fun. Life ain't no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I'm a comedian; I ain't no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.

And lo and behold, my diabolical plan is working.

There are a lot of people building small ideas now. There's an idealization of being an entrepreneur, but the most important thing is to have a really great idea.

You can have too much champagne to drink but you can never have enough.

I like watching films when I don't know anything about the people.

My hands look terrible but I can do anything I want to do, so, you know, I just think I'm playing all around with more good taste and not dashing up and down the piano.

All that man needs for health and healing has been provided by God in nature, the Challenge of science is to find it.

Deep down, I'm a Texas girl looking for that big romance every girl dreams about. Biologically, I look forward to being a cornerstone of a family. I'll be in my glory when I have a child on my knee.

A poem is a small machine made of words.