Writing on a contract for a major studio you get the very best.

It's frustrating not to have more control over your material.

Grossing Out dealt with the western nations selling arms to the Third World and exploiting these countries.

I met Claxton on the set of The Cincinnati Kid.

Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

I like to work at night.

For a director and a producer to be named on the writing credits is practically unheard of.

In the case of The Loved One, I was hired to collaborate on an updated version of the book.

I met The Beatles and Stones at the same time, because Michael Cooper was doing several of their album covers.

David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

Writing on a contract for a major studio you get the very best.

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

In that sense, film is superior, but the difficulty is your lack of control as a writer.

The Loved One has been the most underrated film I've worked on.

It was a good experience working with Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda.

I think the degree of alienation and despair is more universal.

Sometimes we would be staked out in the middle of the river, several barges tied together. So we could party.

After Strangelove I also started work on an adaptation of The Collector.

It's often the case with directors that they don't like to share credit, which is the case of Stanley. He would prefer just A Film By Stanley Kubrick including music and everything.

An angel has no memory.

Peter Beard is one of those people I've known a long time. We have an affinity. We share certain values.

Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.

When I finally made it to the set, I spent a lot of time doing damage control on The Magic Christian.

You can't do the end of the world in a conventionally dramatic way or Boy Meets Girl way.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

Writing novels is the most exciting.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

Writing, overall, has never been what I'd call fun. It's fulfilling. It doesn't come real easy for me.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.

And that's what I've learned too: writing is key.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.