I didn't have to struggle at all to get an AGENT and a publisher. Everything FELL into my lap.

The ATTRACTIVE LADY whom I had only recently been introduced to DROPPED into my LAP... I CHOSE not to dump her off.

When I did 'Esquire,' I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, SITTING on Lyndon Johnson's LAP and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in AMERICAN CULTURE.

I THINK people - especially folks who haven't SEEN a lot of NASCAR - they get this idea that we're just GOING around in circles. And that's so FAR from the truth. You're RUNNING as hard as you can to get all you can every lap.

Growing up, we had 30, 40, 50 people COMING through the HOUSE some Thanksgivings. SOMETIMES there was a kids' table; other times, the plate was just sitting on your lap. You get in where you FIT in at that house.

Everything I write is highly PERSONAL, but PUT in such a way that it's not dropping everything in someone's lap. Although SOMETIMES I think 'The Taxi Ride' embarrasses me, because sometimes I think it's too CLOSE.

If you do a good lap, you KNOW it is a good lap. If you GET that FEELING, it is ADDICTIVE; you WANT more and more.

The only sliding I did was on the KIND of INSTRUMENT that you PUT on your LAP; no SPANISH electrics.

When I read 'Rocky V,' it was a terrific STORY, a great SCRIPT. Rocky DIED at the end. He has this devastating fight with Tommy Gunn, ends up in an ambulance with his head in Adrian's lap, and by the time they get to the hospital, he's dead.

I don't WANT to be an art-house movie guy, where people who go to film school can discuss your WORK, but people who haven't studied cinema can't appreciate it. By the same token, I don't want to be the guy who's MAKING this commercial pap that people LAP up but that disappears the minute you LEAVE the theater.

You can TRY your best and do EVERYTHING right for the most PART and still not GET sacks, and sometimes you can get sacks that fall into your lap.

My father managed shopping malls when I was a kid, and my HIGH school job was to DRESS up in an elf COSTUME and take photos of KIDS sitting on Santa Claus's LAP.

You know, if a TV SHOW dropped into my lap out of the BLUE, I would have a HARD TIME turning it down because there just isn't the money in theater that there is on TV.

A lot of PEOPLE SAY that 'the best SONGS FALL into your lap' and that they're the easiest ones to write and take the shortest AMOUNT of time: I wholeheartedly disagree with that.