Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

I came to hate the complainers, with their dry and crumbly lipsticks and their wrinkled rage and their stupid, flaccid, old-people sun hats with brims the breadth of Saturn's rings.

WISDOM is the STRONGEST weapon you could EVER acquire in your LIFETIME.

I was haunting you, for so long, that I forgot that I became a ghost too.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

The knowledge and spiritual conviction we receive from the Holy Ghost are the result of revelation.

Making movies is difficult and you get disorientated sometimes - even when you're working with fantastic talent.

America is the only country capable of producing national movies: its culture has become a global culture.

God does not hear the prayers of a Jew.

Sometimes I like to play the soundtracks to famous musicals so we can all sing along. South Pacific is one of my favorites. Our neighbors must hate us.

I can't think of a more natural experience in my entire life than playing with Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman again. I really learned how to play with them in terms of drumming.

I had no difficulty as Secretary of Defense moving from the Bush administration to the Obama administration.