I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.

My father could have been deported because on his immigration application he said that he was a printer, obviously because he didn't want them to be checking his writings.

I was a militant smoker, and in my case, I think I particularly used smoking because what I felt was a kind of politically correct big brother assault on smoking.

I had read too many memoirs that were written after the writer or the director was past his or her prime.

I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.

There are no crowds out there demanding to see smoking scenes in movies.

I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.

From what I've been able to determine, many of our big stars are addicted to tobacco. They want to smoke in movies for the same reason I smoked as I wrote, which is that they think their performance is going to be better.

The terrible, diabolic thing with this disease is that you are always looking behind your shoulder every couple months with the most recent checkup to see whether there is any sign of it, and I thank God to say at this point there is not.

I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.

Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.

Meanwhile, politics is about getting a candidate in front of the public as a star, politics as rock'n'roll, politics as a movie.

I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.

Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.

I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.

I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

Cigarettes are not a part of human behaviour, they are a habit.

That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.

Politics has become entertainment.

Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.

The influences in my life were all kind of politically, socially implanted. And then there was Watergate.

Crap has always happened, crap is happening, and crap will continue to happen.

And as a result, I guess I'm just kind of a rubberneck. I'm kind of a - someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don't think journalists are as important as the people they cover.

French fries. I love them. Some people are chocolate and sweets people. I love French fries. That and caviar.

Better late than never, but never late is better

I want to be a soldier as my father was.

Each reader needs to bring his or her own mind and heart to the text.

What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.

It's amazing what they can do with animation nowadays. It's really beautiful. The 3D stuff is out of hand.

Comedy is a necessity to get through life with the fewest scars. Humor is the best antidote to help relieve all struggles.

Several countries - among them Austria, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, India, Israel and Sweden - ban or severely restrict the use of wild animals in circuses. In Brazil, a movement to ban wild animals from circuses started after hungry lions managed to grab and devour a small boy.

What makes a weightlifting program successful? Your hard work and dedication.

Propaganda begins when dialogue ends.

Communism brought out the worst in human nature and crippled people's ability or ambition to participate in a market economy.

Lust for possession and greed has ravaged the soul of humanity like a great cancer metastasizing throughout society in the form of a nouveau post human consumer hedonism.

We're not as materialistic and income-tax conscious as we think. At the moment our superstitions are tucked away, but come out sometimes in strange ways sex crimes, black masses.

When I don't have a good time, it's usually because there's a stiffness that stifles creativity.

Personal life? I'd like to keep it private.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

When I was a teenager, you couldn't get straight pants. Then in '76, when punk started to hit, it was a revelation that you could find straight pants again.

If you create a system that makes the small donors the linchpin of the system in terms of how members of Congress directly raise the funds for their campaigns, then it gives everyday citizens much more of a role - a leveraging role - in the funding of those campaigns.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

I learned at that young age that sometimes a really big chance pays off.

Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people which makes it hard to provoke them. Human rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on humans which makes them potentially dangerous.