A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

The last time somebody said, 'I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, 'They used to say the same thing about drugs.'

A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo clinic.

According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.

Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.

I do some eccentric dancing.

I have written some of the clumsiest, most clogged-yet-vagrant, hobbledehoyish, hitch-slipping sentences ever conceived by the human mind.

I heard on public radio recently, there's a thing called Weed Dating. Singles get together in a garden and weed and then they take turns, they keep matching up with other people. Two people will weed down one row and switch over with two other people. It's in Vermont. I don't think I'd be very good at Weed Dating.

I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?

I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity.

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.

People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

The more you try to pin a word down, the more you realize that it has its own cape, sword and little hat.

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don't remember what I was like before I learned my ABC's, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.

We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods.

When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly.

When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language.

A good heavy book holds you down. Its an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

The making of 'Naked' was an absolutely phenomenal, mind-bending experience. That film was life-changing and put my career onto a whole different level.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

I'll never retire. I like what I'm doing.

I believe that the American audience is not so dumb that they wouldn't be interested in a black story.

I am unique.

Why they vote for me is irrelevant, but if they do, they're in safe hands.

My music is the chicken soup kind. I want people to get a good feeling in their soul from these songs. Roots rock, heartland rock... whatever you want to call it is OK with me.

Immanence, or complicity, allows the writer to be a kind of shock absorber of the culture: to reflect back its 'whatness,' refracted through the sensibility of his consciousness.

I never accepted the idea that I had to be guided by some pattern or blueprint.

Sometime between when the Summer of Love ended and the Summer of Sam began, America became a nation of cynics about love.

It's nice to invest yourself fully in whatever you're doing... I think it's best to try and give everything you've got; otherwise, what's the point?

Hardcore wrestling like CZW is just nonsense. There's no story there. You've got guys jumping off of houses onto barb wired tables, and that's it. They don't know how to work. CZW is trash.

The overall experience Skype provided was superior to other folks because of the underlying architecture and the ability to provide a superior experience.

Do not train children to learn by force and harshness but direct them to it by what amuses their minds so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

I have always appreciated those who dare to experiment with materials and proportions.

Humans pull together in an odd way when they're in the wilderness. It's astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download.

Museums do not share their collections with other museums unless they get something in exchange. The Metropolitan will deal with the Louvre, but will they send their stuff to Memphis? No.

I like acting, but I like filmmaking better. I went to film school. I want to make films.

The only thing worse than an opportunity you don't deserve is blowing an opportunity.

The most fun I've had on 'Burn Notice,' I think it would have to be working with China Chow and Lucy Lawless.

From an art perspective, I don't know how you get better than 'Beetlejuice.' In terms of originality and a look, it's 100% unique.

I like country music. I'm not going to lie. I'm from the South, and I grew up on it. My dad was a country singer-songwriter, so it's in my blood, and I love it.

Its like theres a filter set up in my brain except instead of making things better it twists everything around so what comes out of my mouth is totally wrong totally different from what I was thinking.

I can't imagine doing anything without being an improviser. I can't imagine trying to write or act or direct without what improvising offers you.