Lin Yutang

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

You know what we say in the Hamptons: If you have to come out on a Friday afternoon or go back on a Sunday night, you're not rich enough to have a house there. So, you have to be able to come and go when you feel like it in the Hamptons.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.