The only thing that exists is torment, lyricism, and the magnificence of language.

My fear now is of cliche, of complacency, of not being able to feel authenticity in myself and those around me.

There's a lot of skeletons in my closet!

I generally play strong people and scary people.

People have said unkind things and you kind of have to, if you happen to read it, you have to just, you know, move on.

I lived in Texas for 10 years. There were a lot of people chewing, including my dad.

The writer should always serve as his own angleworm —and the sharper the barb with which he fishes himself out of blackness, the better.

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture.

Motive is never easy. Sometimes it occurs to one only later.

You never really forget who you are. If you did, you'd need to seek some professional help

I have to be careful of what TV shows I choose, particularly ones that have commercials in them, because it's going to be a different kind of television show.

I read somewhere that dedications are like coded love letters, but I always seem to lay us out bare.Sorry for the poems.

Everybody does the same thing over and over again. I like to do the same thing every day.

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

His religion at best is an anxious wish,-like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder...We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil, and destroy it.

What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.