Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with.

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones just as the wind blows out a candle and fans a fire.

Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.

If the poor, for example, because they are more in number, divide among themselves the property of the rich,- is not this unjust? . . this law of confiscation clearly cannot be just.

The only grandeur of imperialism lies in the nation's losing battle against it.

The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time.

As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.

I love to read. I wish I could advise more people to read. There's a whole other world in books.

When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do.

Well, whether it's on film or on TV, you don't want to throw too many curves at your audio and video guys.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.