It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll give you two.
Talent is a valued tormentor.
The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he’ll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.
I don’t use a typewriter, I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially I’m a horizontal writer. I think better when I’m lying down.
Sicily is more beautiful than any woman.
Life is difficult enough without Meryl Streep movies.
Mick Jagger moves like a parody between a majorette girl and Fred Astaire.
There is such an animal as a nonstylist, only they’re not writers – they’re typists.
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.
Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can’t stand it for some reason.
I’ve been working, working, working, and you know, sometimes you look back at your work and you see that it just isn’t any good.
Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist.
Actually, I think friendship and love are exactly the same thing.
The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.
Work is the only device I know of.
Of course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on.
I’ve got something inside of me, peasantlike and stubborn, and I’m in it till the end of the race.
Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can’t wait.
A boy has to peddle his book.