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" It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard. "

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" I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have. "

" You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history. "

" I won't ever do e-mail. "

" Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom. "

" When I started out I was a failed actor. "

" The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation. "

" A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others. "

" My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble. "

" It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. "

" It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel. "

" A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. "

" The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all. "

" I don't really have a social life. "

" I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer. "

" American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East. "

" My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.' "

" I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. "

" Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English. "

" I hate vacations. There's nothing to do. "

" My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director. "

" Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status. "

" I look back upon my Liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe. "

" The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing; that politicians go in poor and go out rich; that the Government screws up everything it touches; and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive. "

" The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle. "

" If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions. "

" Our job, as writers is to do our jobs. "

" Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit. "

" Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. "

" The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law. "

" We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive. "