“Really being friends is the most important part, I think, of any relationship.”

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

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.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.

It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something

One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it’s going to be told.

You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.

The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to get dressed up for it.

The better the actor, the more stupid he is.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.

Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.

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

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much.

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.

You have to be a friend to yourself. You know, ’cause if you’re not a friend to yourself, you’re an enemy to yourself and if someone’s a friend of everybody they are an enemy to themselves.

When I was about 15. I was just singing around, and people kept telling me I needed to try it. A friend got me to sing in front of Troy Taylor, and he took to me right there.

Character, my friends, is a byproduct. It is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

My parents were journalists and friends with writers, artists, and just a really interesting assortment of people, so I was exposed to all lifestyles from a young age.

I lent a friend of mine $10,000 for plastic surgery and now I don’t know what he looks like.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.