“If you should attempt to maintain that film is an art in conversation with a cultured, intelligent American, he'll just plain stop talking to you.”

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.”

“American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.”

“Conversation lets you be an artist every time you open your mouth--or shut it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The most important art is to omit"; the key to being a master conversationalist is to listen at least as much as you talk. Just as the other arts include pauses in a dramatic play, white margins around printed text, and space between a singer's phrases, conversation is about silences as well as about words.”

“Sighs and silences and avoided conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.”

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”