Goodbye. I'm leaving because I'm bored.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

You want to build a big business? Start with your character.

Do not seek wealth or splendor, but seek true wisdom, freedom, and joy of life.

Courage is the basic virtue for everyone so long as he continues to grow to move ahead.

World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.

[Liberty] is a choreand a long-distance race, quite solitary, quite exhausting.

The smaller the head, the bigger the dream.

The nice thing about Southerners is the way we enjoy our neuroses.

People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.

It's important for us to become aware of the fact that we are needful, for with that awareness also comes the sensing that we couldn't be needful if there weren't something to fulfill the need.

For some reason and I don't know why, but I don't think that I'm funny in California. So I always want to do my movies east somewhere.