“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

“I hated school. I don't trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

“And what about those [writers' workshop] critiques, by the way? How valuable are they? Not very, in my experience, sorry. A lot of them are maddeningly vague. I love the feeling of Peter's story, someone may say. It had something... a sense of I don't know... there's a loving kind of you know... I can't exactly describe it....It seems to occur to few of the attendees that if you have a feeling you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”

“Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.”

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

“It's like the old pie-in-the-face routine: it stops being funny when it starts being you.”

“It seems to occur to few of the attendees [of a writing retreat] that if you have a feel you just can't describe, you might just be, I don't know, kind of like, my sense of it is, maybe in the wrong fucking class.”