"People who run for president seriously and people who become president enter a bizarre secret society in which they have had an experience that none of us will ever have."

"More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about."

"Hosting a TV show is a full-time job in which success is defined by it never ending."

"I think that obviously, there is a perverse attraction to a fundamentally changed world or the end of the world. There is a death wish, a perverse death wish. Not just for ourselves, not just for the movie 'Death Wish,' but for the end of all human life."

"I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m."

"I sometimes don't wash my hair for two weeks. That's pretty disgusting. It's short, so sometimes it's easier to just wet it."

"Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony."

"With Dick Smith there, and the words of Peter Shaffer... they've got to be the most beautiful descriptions in music ever written on film or in literature. And we could hear the music accompanying the words... What more can you ask for?"