Divorce: fission after fusion.

I've met many irresponsible people in my life but never an irresponsible cat.

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love.

I distrust manifest knowledge.

You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

To have meaningful work is a tremendous happiness.

All outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever -- fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

What's the point of prolonging your life if you don't enjoy it? It's your body. Do whatever you want with it. Better to wear out than rust over.

I'm sorry that our country and the people do not consider the arts as vital to our well-being as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering.

All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.

Why marry a woman if you're going to betray her, and if you're going to betray her, why beat her? The fault is not hers ... I sometimes think the worst we do, we do behind closed doors.

I do think women avoid power. Power assumes responsibility and accountability, and I think many, many women want to have it both ways.

So much of life is happenstance. It makes me laugh when I go to a bookstore and see all those titles about controlling your life. You're lucky if you can control your bladder.

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.

We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not.