Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

If you had all the time in the world but your knowledge, wisdom and understanding remained unchanged, your life would remain the same.

That lady has a piano.It’s nice, but it’s not the running of riversOr the murmuring trees make ..Who needs a piano?It’s better to have earsAnd love Nature.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside

It is simply economically impossible to require controls that even approach zero emissions.

I guess because I pay so much attention to the physical part of the character, I don't look upon it as like Charlize Theron up there. I don't think of them as like Charlize Theron films.

Nothing is more pathological in our pathological modernity than this disease of Christian pity.

We cannot tax the same people we expect to create jobs. That is a recipe for keeping people out of work.

I don't like writing as an expert. I like writing as an amateur. I like writing as an idiot. It's much more fun to start in ignorance.

In the ambiguity and shifting playing field of adult life, I often wish I could just fill in a dot and have someone say “Yes” and hand me a chicken leg, or “No” and slap me with an old fish.

The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.