"My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties."

"I don't want to be the one to break it to you, but the future ain't that funny."

"If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money."

"I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it."

"It's much easier to write when you're sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from."

"Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading."

"I read all the time. People ask, 'Do you read while you work?' And I say, 'I better.' I take two or three years to finish one of my enormous books, and I can't go that long without reading."

"I would go to work from 9 to 6, go home, nap for two hours, then write from 8 to 2 a.m."