Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can't celebrate humanity but I'm not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

Casting is everything. If you get the right people they make you look good.

And that's just what I'm saying. I would never want to be like certain people, who change the way they dress, go out in disguise, wear a big floppy hat and dark shades. I would hate that.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

Why hadn't that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn't feel like a nag.

Every situation you encounter is necessary for your spiritual journey on earth.

Comfort without action is only discomfort and dissatisfaction in latent action. It always seems we shall have a good tomorrow until a bad tomorrow comes

He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.

Sometimes when you have everything you can't really tell what matters.

I take solace in knowing that some of the steps I took can help other people.

Where's the rest of me?

There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.

It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.

I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.