I call myself a playmaker sometimes - but that's just a word. I don't feel like I have to have a title or a job description.

One of the reasons I love to jump back and forth between mediums is that film does allow me to be more literal. I can go to the real place. I can go to the Coliseum, and I don't have to fake it.

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

I think we all see the world from our own little unique bubble.

I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.

There is incredible power in the arts to inspire and influence.

When you break into song, it's not about dialogue, it's not about how you would speak in a naturalistic sense-it's about expressing your inner torment or your inner joy.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

What I don't have in theater is editing.

An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.

Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.

Vocation at its deepest level is, 'This is something I can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.

Nourish yourself so you can feed others.

I failed, I failed, and that is about all that can be said about it.

It is hard to wive and thrive both in a year.

I don't like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.

If you mean you think it is my job to go into the secret passage first, O Thorin Thrain’s son Oakenshield, may your beard grow ever longer,” he said crossly, “say so at once and have done!

I have so many favorite writers, it's very hard to select a few... of classic writers, I have always admired Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.

Grant people a lifetime of forgiveness before you even meet them.