When I'm in the field, when I'm working, I keep very careful notes. I wear big shirts with big breast pockets, and I carry in them two little spiral notebooks.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.

I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes.

When I'm in the field, when I'm working, I keep very careful notes. I wear big shirts with big breast pockets, and I carry in them two little spiral notebooks.

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?

I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority.

The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress.

Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions.

For me, it's about surrounding myself with the best, most talented team out there, and not ever being afraid of being the worst guy in the room. It's ego-crushing, yeah. Every day is ego-crushing. But it keeps you sharper than you can imagine.

Every time you look at a house in Los Angeles, the real-estate agent will tell you that someone famous once lived there. It always seemed irrelevant to me: Does a property gain value just because Alfred Hitchcock used to eat breakfast there?

A father should be his sons first hero and his daughters first love.

Salesmen always need something to sell.

The evolution of sex is the hardest problem in evolutionary biology.

Giving more to women will, to some extent, come at the expense of men. People sometimes try to sweep that under the rug by saying you will create so much additional resources that everyone will be better off. I don't think that's true.

I enjoy being Jewish, but I'm an atheist... I hate fundamentalism in all its forms. Jews, Catholics, Baptists, I think they are all potty and capable of destroying the world.

At home, I make a large batch of tomato sauce and freeze it in meal-size portions in freezer bags.

The most important thing to do is really listen.

I've just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.

There's a lot in my closet. I've been collecting things since I was five. I'm definitely a pack rat. I'm not a hoarder, but I'm definitely a pack rat. I will keep anything if I have a memory in it or a good moment.

I'm absolutely convinced that the very small global warming we are experiencing is the result of natural causes. It's a cyclical phenomenon in the history of the Earth. The role of man is very small, almost negligible.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

It's very simple. We are asking baseball to come clean and set the record straight. Either baseball officials seriously want to rid their sport of doping, or they want to brush the issue under the carpet. So far, we haven't seen much evidence of the former.

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

You don't forget crises and neither does the Queen.

The one good thing about failure is that it makes you consider doing things a different way.

I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West alone. We say no to whites owning our land, and they should go... They can own companies and apartments... but not the soil. It is ours, and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.

I think the most harmful belief passed on to me - not always directly - was the belief that whatever I did as a Negro, however much we Negroes achieved, despite the presence of some enlightened whites, white society as a whole enjoyed being racists in the secret core of their being and would never, ever give that up.

You can get a lawyer with two months off or a New York socialite who wants to play at being Lewis and Clark and put them up there, but Everest is still in charge; it can still kick butt.

Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.

Let me completely condemn these sickening scenes; scenes of looting, scenes of vandalism, scenes of thieving, scenes of people attacking police, of people even attacking firefighters. This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted.

They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but for most people, by the time it's ready to eat, they just don't fancy it any more.