I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

I feel like I'm not smart enough to answer the questions I'm asked.

All of my books come from pain.

Are you as much of a criminal if you don't act when there's a crime taking place in front of you as you are one of the participants? That was something that I was thinking about a lot because there are many moments in 'Less Than Zero' where horrific things happen and Clay could do something about them, but his passivity stops him.

Completely committed to adapting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. This is not a joke. Christian Grey and Ana: potentially great cinematic characters.

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.

Everyone I know who is successful has issues with their father, regardless of whether it was sports or business or entertainment.

Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.

Hope E. L .James doesn't think I'm being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream.

I do not feel I have a legacy to protect.

I don't know why I write what I write.

I had no idea that 'Less Than Zero' was going to be read by anyone outside of Los Angeles, and it's - believe me, as the writer of the book I'm somewhat amused and intrigued by the idea that 25 years later it's still out and people are still reading it.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

I think basically most men are misogynistic.

I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn't thinking about them being movies.

I went to college in Vermont, and then stayed in the East Coast.

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.

It's the rare book that's able to transport you in a way that a movie does.

No one is drawn to writing about being happy or feelings of joy.

Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn't a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don't know. I think it's a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

Why would I care what other people are thinking? I don't care what an audience thinks of me.

When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking.

I take great pride in having been able to overcome the Asian financial crisis and seeking the opportunities available to bring about an unprecedented growth in the economy.

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.

In short, our response as a party should be to work to solve the crises that produce crisis pregnancies, and work to make life worth living for mother and child, rather than victimize the child as a way of dealing with the crisis.

If for no other reason than the energy crisis now facing this country, the federal government should be eager to become partners with us in rebuilding our city.

Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution.

Asean is obviously a very important association for us. Over the past 30 years Asean has made great strides in regional cooperation covering a number of areas, although recently it has been under strain because of the financial crisis and other challenges.

Every crisis offers you extra desired power.

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.

The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.

I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.

But the most important thing is, Enron did not cause the California crisis.

Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down.

I really do think that any deep crisis is an opportunity to make your life extraordinary in some way.

I am pleased to see that many of the world's leaders have publicly recognized that the crisis in the Middle East was deliberately incited by terrorist organizations.

I also believed that our public at home would be strong enough to survive even the present crisis.

I understand that it's hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions... we'll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we'll have to work on overcoming it.

Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.

Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.

It's an interesting line that I walk. The AIDS crisis has done a lot for my songs and made them proliferate, and my songs have contributed a lot to that cause as well.

I don't like the term mid-life crisis.

Motherhood has relaxed me in many ways. You learn to deal with crisis. I've become a juggler, I suppose. It's all a big circus, and nobody who knows me believes I can manage, but sometimes I do.