“Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?”

It is planned speeches that contain lies or dissimulations, not what you blurt out so spontaneously in one instant.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

I don’t want realism. I want magic!

Some things are not forgiveable.

Time goes by so fast. Nothin’ can outrun it. Death commences too early–almost before you’re half-acquainted with life–you meet the other.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

I don’t believe in “original sin.” I don’t believe in “guilt.” I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.

Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are.

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Luck is believing you’re lucky.

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!

Something in me will save me from utter ruin no matter what comes.

I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.

But we will encourage the church to do that in general for anyone and everyone who’s seeking to be a mature believer in Christ.

Everyone talks about Spanish influences, but where is it?…Tell me 10 great Spanish restaurants in London….You can’t give me the addresses. Nor in Paris.

The only solution is to kill 600 people in one night. Let the UN and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene – and it is over for 20 years.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.

And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to.

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.