It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one's will.

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

Put cotton in your ears and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant old age.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.

Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.

Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down

This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.

If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson called New York.

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

It's like living at an airshow, unless you have something against airplanes, golf, guns, motorcycles, nice cars or drinking.

Some people try deliberately to exploit the colonial hangover for their own purpose, to serve an external force. To us, Communism is as bad as imperialism.

The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.

Of course, I didn't tell you about all the times I said I was going to hit one and it didn't happen.

For film, I audition just like everyone else, because it's a different set of casting directors.

What luxury would I take to a desert island? A mirror. It's true. I'd miss me.

Feel like (I've been) released from prison.