An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

Our ultimate finishing line in life is death! Whilst you have life, work hard and trust God!

You haunt me. You alone. You're my fire. I'm your air." Nathaniel to Amelia

I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God. It was actually quite relaxing.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

I am interested in circulating past iconography in the present in order to get to the future.

Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.

The Long Island Sound is an environmentally unique estuary that needs to be protected.

Let not our proposal be disregarded on the score of our youth.

Giving advice isn't as risky as people say. Few ever take it anyway.