John Dos Passos, Raymond Carver, Flaubert and William Maxwell were all very influential when I first started writing. Now, the writers I'm most interested in are the writers who are most unlike me: for example, Denis Johnson.
Unless you're Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant, there are few guys who can do comedy and drama.
A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
I'm from Mexico, and I've heard some horror stories about cast members who can't stand each other. What we have on 'Jane' is a blessing. We do table reads for every single episode one day before it starts to shoot.
For a 12-year-old with a hyperactive imagination who liked to dream of dreary gothic castles, suburban Florida felt a little stifling.
What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?
We call ourselves a dog's 'master' - but who ever dared to call himself the 'master' of a cat? We own a dog - he is with us as a slave and inferior because we wish him to be. But we entertain a cat - he adorns our hearth as a guest, fellow-lodger, and equal because he wishes to be there.
A Cat Stevens record isn't just Cat Stevens' ideas. It's Cat Stevens and all the musicians who play with Cat Stevens, right?
I'm the catalyst for the downfall of the Blairites, the Clintonites, the Bushites, and all these dreadful people who work hand in glove with Goldman Sachs and everybody else, have made themselves rich, and ruined our countries. I couldn't be happier.
Obamacare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care, by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic circumstances.
When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
In terms of pure acting, my role model has always been Philip Seymour Hoffman; I really always loved what he did. I love what Mark Ruffalo does. When I was younger, I liked Cate Blanchett a lot. These are all actors who are given stories and allowed to carry the whole story.
At the end of their first years, there are few people who would have predicted that Truman would be elected in 1948 or that Reagan would get a second term. It's always premature to make some kind of categorical judgment after the first year in office.
I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
I don't categorize myself as an 85-year-old woman who has written an erotic novel. I categorize myself as a writer who's written an erotic novel.
We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink).
He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
