On both sides of the highway I could see the rows of little frame houses, all alike, as if there were only one architect in the city and he had a magnificent obsession.

I have a secret passion for mercy. . . but justice is what keeps happening to people.

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The surprise with which a detective novel concludes should set up tragic vibrations which run backward through the entire structure.

The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world of disasters.

There are certain families whose members should all live in different towns - different states, if possible - and write each other letters once a year.

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

When there's trouble in a family, it tends to show up in the weakest member. And all the other members of the family know that. They make allowances for the one in trouble.

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

An ugly woman with a gun is a terrible thing.

I’m not a bloody cockroach. What’s all this about? What are you trying to find out?

It is seriously time for a miracle.

Going into my 20s, I was uncertain, trying to figure out what my relationship to acting is.

There's very few people who want to just make beautiful films that make money when they can make films that make huge money.

Whereas the melancholic exhibits a state of general inhibition, in the manic patient even normal inhibitions of the instincts are partly or wholly abolished.

I think people who say radio is gone or radio is irrelevant are way off the mark. It's still by a huge degree the dominant medium. I know it's changing but radio is still incredibly important.

There is no truth without responsibility following in its wake.

At times during high school and college I wished to be a sportswriter.

Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.