"Staying on the path of something you’re trying to create has much to do with having confidence in yourself and in your capacity to realize the things you want out of life"

"There is still a patronizing attitude in the media towards African-Americans"

"Feminine sensibilities are not being acknowledged, and we’ve allowed the antipeople to steal the children and are tolerating far too much: the assault on ourselves, the families of the world, permitting war and rape."

"I don't know who I would be if I weren't this child from Harlem, this woman from Harlem. It's in me so deep"

"We have to bring forward the graces in life and make them real"

"It is a dastardly crime and an insult to the word democracy to make a commodity of jailing people."

"we gave ourselves permission to have other partners if we wished to"

"I didn't care about being integrated or accepted"

"in a marriage loyalty and fidelity and trust cannot be compromised."

"It occurred to me that being what they call 'colored,' being a Negro, was some kind of a disadvantage"

"It deserves to be mentioned here that one purpose of these huge fees is to establish respect; in the constitution of Hollywood, a million-dollar director has half a million dollars more respect than a $500,000 director. This is why the Eleventh Commandment of a motion picture negotiation is Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal. Everyone knows what everyone else makes (this information is passed around like popcorn at a movie), and the person who violates this Eleventh Commandment is seen not as a model of restraint and moderation but as a plain goddamn fool."

"Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe."

"Anecdotes are factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss, often set in gilded venues and populated with familiar names as background atmosphere, purged of ambiguity in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing smoothly."

"A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material. Resentment sharpens his eye, hostility hones his killer instinct."

"New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities — in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East."

"The insatiable appetites of instant communication have necessitated a whole new set of media ground rules, pedicated not only on the recording of fact but also on the projection of glamour and image and promise. The result of this cultural nymphomania is that we have become a nation of ten-minute celebrities. People, issues and causes hit the charts like rock groups, and with approximately as much staying power."

"Membership in the closed society of the motion picture industry is almost never revoked for moral failings."

"There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis. ... Conspiracy is a small but durable seller, retooled every year or so."

"I had been exposed to the motion picture industry at oblique angles ever since I arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, and some of its working arrangements seemed to me far more magical than that glamour for which the Industry was noted: there was the way in which failure escalated the possibilities of success, the way in which price bore no relation to demand. There was the way in which millions of dollars were gambled on ephemeral, unpredictable and, uncomfortably often, invalid ideas of marketability. There was the way that many, perhaps most, people in the Industry remained unconscious of their own myths and superstitions. There was the Eldorado mood of life in the capital, the way in which social and economic fortunes could shoot up or plummet down, as in a mining boom town, on no more than rumors, the hint of a rich vein, the gossip that the lode was played out."

"Hollywood is a technological crapshoot."

"Beating up on screenwriters is a Hollywood blood sport; everyone in the business thinks he or she can write, if only time could be found. That writers find the time is evidence of their inferior position on the food chain. In the Industry, they are regarded as chronic malcontents, overpaid and undertalented, the Hollywood version of Hessians, measuring their worth in dollars, since ownership of their words belongs to those who hire and fire them."

"Stanley claims that the world is divided up into two kinds of people – those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don’t."

"I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge."

"The narrative was too constricted; it was like a fetus strangling on its own umbilical cord."

"What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam War is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not."

"“Deems, this new pastime of yours may prove your undoing.” “Eh?” “Thinking. You’ve done so little of it in your life. This much exertion all at once…Well, it can’t be healthy.”"

"“You’ve been planning moves in advance.” “As necessary in life as in chess.”"

"Silence hung like a boulder precariously balanced."

"This look into the far future has lightened my heart. Simply to know that there is a future is somehow reassuring."

"The truth lay on him like the rubble of a landslide."

"The desire to rule, to dictate, is born of nothing but contempt."

"Chico’s was busy that night, the dance floor a scrummage of writhing humanity. Snowclaw couldn’t get over the noise in the place. It had taken some getting used to. He didn’t quite understand what all the thumping and screeching was about, though he knew it had something to do with music. And the dancing was completely incomprehensible. Snowy took it to be some complex courting ritual. But what did the flashing lights have to do with anything?"

"We live in a world of IP, where the safest thing to do is reboot something that has an audience. I wanted to prove to myself I wasn’t a one-trick pony. It’s harder than it’s ever been to get something made that’s not based on a previous movie or comic book or video game. Every generation deserves its own stories, instead of just the stories of their grandparents."

"Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future."

"The silence was deep, yet it was the sort of restful, contemplative silence befitting and peculiar to a library."

"Jeremy shook his head. “I used to dream about women like you. Hell, every guy does. You’re like a centerfold.” “Why, thank you.” “I mean it. You’re beautiful. But I just can’t believe that you’re real.” “But I am.” “You’re a computer program, for pete’s sake.” “What difference does that make?” “What difference? Well, I mean, you don’t just go around making out with computer programs. A program is just a…” “Just a pattern of information.” “Yeah. Just a pattern.” “So are you.” “What do you mean?” “You’re just a pattern of information, too. What makes you you is the configuration of data that’s in your brain. Your brain is just holding the information, just like a storage device. No difference. Your pattern is stored in a body, mine in a computer.” Jeremy was silent. Then he said, “I never thought of it that way.” “We’re both software, Jeremy. Why can’t we interface?” “I guess…well, maybe. But where did your body come from?” She shrugged. “I guess you could say that my body is just a pattern of information, too. Everything is merely a configuration of data.” “I don’t get it. But I’ll tell you one thing. I like your configuration a lot.” She smiled and kissed him."

"Tell my doppelgänger not to do anything I wouldn’t do."

"The sixteenth hole wouldn’t have gone well even if the herd of wyverns hadn’t showed up."

"Look, we’re not getting anywhere. Why don’t we all return to our respective…whatever you call them. Continua, quantum glitches, Erewhons, reflections of reflections—"

"Fate, eh? Bloody bad luck, I call it."

"“It might have something to do with quantum uncertainty. ‘Quantum uncertainty’ is good for explaining just about anything that doesn’t make sense.”"

"So far, so good, the man said as he fell thirty-nine of forty stories."

"Nobody ever gained anything by playing chess with himself."

"This must be a field day for the end-is-nigh, compound-dwelling, bullets-and-Bibles folk. They must feel so vindicated. If there was any comfort to find at the end of the world, it was knowing you were right all along and that was about it."

"This was not a time of civility or compassion, but of survival."

"What good is it surviving the end of the world if there are still stupid rules about what grown-ups can do and kids can’t?"