I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!

People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.

I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.

It's always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that's the person I'm going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it's there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain't me.

Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.

I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.

My success is not who I am.

I've never been one to tear the social fabric.

I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired.

Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they'd be my best friend. Other times you're being interviewed by a complete jerk.

I'm glad I'm successful at it, because it's allowed me to live very well financially, and give my kids a lot of things. It's enabled me to do stuff that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do. But it's not who I am.

I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!

With my friends, I don't feel pressure to be someone other than who I am.

It's true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.

Comedy is actually very macho driven.

When I was a kid in the mid-'60s, I was what's known as a moddie boy, a prototype skinhead. You all had your hair like a crew cut, cropped, with suits or Levis with red suspenders, sometimes Doc Martens. It was a thriving soul music, Motown and ska scene; we used to dance to Prince Buster and the Skatalites.

Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.

Idealism is no good. Any concrete dedication to an abstract condition results in unpleasant things like wars.

A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.

My books are so tame!

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals.

The day I make movies that Rupert Murdoch likes and admires is the day I'll throw in the towel, because he's got no taste.

Moroccan traffic isn't like normal traffic. It's armed combat, a war of wills, in which only the very bravest have a chance to survive.

We need two kinds of acquaintances one to complain to while to the others we boast.

As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.

Acid wasn't getting a whole lot of bad press at the time, and as I saw the whole bad-press thing happen, I became aware that the government had done a whole lie on all the other benign drugs as well. It became clear to me that the government wanted no real drug education.

The main threads running through the lives of W. A. Clark and his daughter Huguette include the costs of ambition, the burdens of inherited wealth, the fragility of reputation, the folly of judging someone's life from the outside, and the tension between engaging with the world, with all its risks, and keeping a safe distance from danger.

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.

I love the challenge of having one character who is traveling back in time to find someone. Nowadays, the only way we think to find someone is on Facebook.

Its called diet because all the other 4 letter words were taken.

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

There's nothing unnatural in creation.

I kind of feel like every time I do a film, it is me and an entire male ensemble cast.

Its amazing that no matter how much money you have you can make some bad decisions and in five months youre on the street begging.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

It's time for the IRA to go out of business.

Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.