Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

For a minute, I can feel it: the sense of peace as my mind goes quiet, like I'm already dead. I am weightless and free. Nothing and no one to fear, not even myself.

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible.

Wisdom is intelligence set on fire.

No one's serious at seventeen, When lindens line the promenades

I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman.

If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

A Newsweek poll said if the election were held today, John Kerry would beat Bush 49 percent to 46 percent. And today, President Bush called Newsweek magazine a threat to world peace.

Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.

Procrastinatio n is the thief of dreams