“It’s a funny thing about writing. You get so balled up in a story idea that you lose your perspective and forget that human being might read your words someday.”

“Most of the ideas I’ve gotten for novels or screenplays have occurred to me while I was either shaving or taking a bath. A number have occurred to me while I was driving 127. I rarely get ideas when seated in front of my typewriter, which I find ironic because I have always suspected that typing somehow plays a key role in writing.”

“Golf baffles me. They says it’s a sport, and I have to take their word for it, but anything that involves having fun while standing up doesn’t interest me. That includes dancing. NASCAR I can understand. In fact, anything that involves sitting down automatically has my interest...”

“That was how I was going to get things back to normal—by working. I never thought I would use the words “working” and “normal” in the same sentence, but I’ll try anything to avoid facing reality.”

“My big dream back then was to buy an IBM Selectric. I still have that dream. I really ought to buy a word-processor. Half the cabbies at Rocky own computers. They tell me they can write failed novels ten times faster on a PC.”

“When I was a teenager, most fathers tended to go berserk when I asked their daughters on a date.... I discovered that all fathers go berserk when their daughters start dating. I have to assume this was because all fathers were once teenagers at some point in their lives, so they had no illusions about whether or not the boys were “up to something.”

“I don’t know why the publishers in New York don’t take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas.”