My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage.


Some of those early roles were unactable. Even Laurence Olivier couldn't have done anything with them. The dialog ran to cardboard passages such as, 'I love you. You can rely on me, darling. I'll wait.' It was all I could do to keep from adding, 'With egg on my face.'

As movers and the moved both know, books are heavy freight, the weight of refrigerators and sofas broken up into cardboard boxes. They make us think twice about changing addresses.

My lip curls in a snide reflex whenever I hear that a new novel is written from the point of view of a child or a monster, a lunatic or an animal. I immediately expect a nasty coyness of tone, cheesy artifice, the world through cardboard 3-D lenses.

I could party in a cardboard box with people who are funny and don't care. For me, it's really about who I surround myself with, so I just try to always be with hilarious people.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

If you want, you can have a coffin made out of cardboard or wicker or papier mache. There's one like a seed pod, or you could buy one that doubles as both a bookcase and a coffin. During your life, you stand it in your living room, and then after you die, the books are taken out and your body put in their place and the whole thing buried.