Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

There is nothing, not a thing, like the process of creating a character for the stage - you can't get it anywhere else. Unless you're totally method and spend six months living your life like your character for a film, the theater is the place to get that intense acting experience.

It's not my concern to make a commercial pop record. I want to make a record of music that I would listen to, that is lyrically rich and has songs that people can relate to - more along the Jakob Dylan route: people who create for the art of it and not necessarily the monetary rewards of it.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table.