Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.

I've spent a lot of time and money trying to keep my anger in control.

Eternal superiority of the Dandy. What is the Dandy?

If you will excuse me, your coat lapels are badly twisted downward, where they have been grasped by the pertinacious New York reporters.

I've been working on this feature script for Master Class, a play by Terrence McNally that won a lot of Tonys.

They turned the country up on its side, and everything loose fell into California.

The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.

In the UK, everything is a bit older and a bit more worn-out, and the people are a bit more tired. You know. I think Americans are a bit looser, a bit more out to have a fun time.

Art has this ability to allow you to connect back through history in the same way that biology does. I'm always looking for source material.

I tend to wear monochromatic outfits - all one colour from head to toe.

I rarely hit home runs in batting practice, and usually when I do feel that good, I'll have a bad game.