Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

I find I have to give myself a day when I just shut myself off and do nothing but read.

I like L.A., but I think what's changed is that the kinds of films I do, the mid-range dramatic film, has become an endangered species.

I love films. If I'd known how to get into or do it from the word go, I would have done that.

I'm ashamed to say the first play I saw at the Royal Court was mine.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

It's great to get out of the study and work with real living and breathing people.

Often I think the novels I read won't make very good movies - I better not say which I'm looking at for potential films! - but it's nice to have an excuse to just sit and read for a whole day.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

There is a sort of theory that you should adapt bad books because they always make more successful films.

There was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

I think theres something degrading about having a husband for a rival. Its humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

I like to take pictures of lots of things: people-such as my nephews, my dogs, and just interesting objects that I see. For instance, I might take a picture of flowers by the side of the road, an old sign or a fence.

I think women are natural caretakers. They take care of everybody. They take care of their husbands and their kids and their dogs, and don't spend a lot of time just getting back and taking time out.

I am elected by the people of Bucharest, not the dogs.

My feet are dogs.

The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.

Happens to everybody. Horses, dogs, men. Nobody gets out of life alive.

I'm looking more like my dogs every day - it must be the shaggy fringe and the ears.

Of the seven experiments, the ones that have been most investigated so far have been the pets. The dogs who know when their masters for coming home, and the sense of being stared at.

People who keep dogs are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

I've got nine kids, nine dogs, three grandkids - and one in the oven. And three parrots!

Flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs.

In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.

That they may have a little peace, even the best dogs are compelled to snarl occasionally.

Dogs are very, very pleasant with people that they're connected to.

I like to be at home because I just travel so much. I have four dogs, golden retrievers.

There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.

Feed the dogs. I hate to hear them barking like that.

It seems like all the good looking people have smaller dogs these days. Especially for the women, because they always come in with their little Chihuahuas and the guys come in with their Golden Retrievers.

I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.

Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way.

One of my dogs is in the movie Beethoven's 2nd.

Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

If you call a cat, he may not come. Which doesn't happen with dogs. They're different types of animals. Cats are very sexy I think too in the way they move.

I started working at Hanna-Barbera in '92 on 2 Stupid Dogs.

Dogs never bite me. Just humans.

Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.