If the atmosphere is to be foreboding, you must forebode on every page. If it is to be cold, you must chill, not once or twice, but until your readers are shivering.

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.

My heart was oaken before you set it on fire. It will continue to smolder, long after the flame that ignited it has gone.

She put others before herself and yet you hate her. What did she do to you?

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.

How do you keep cheer when you go from beautiful to bald in three days?

We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism.

Lie on your back and look at the stars.

Simon had been all lined up and he’d managed to throw away the best girl he’d ever meet. “What a dumbass,” Beck muttered. “No way I’d have done that.

There was no racism; there was no problem [in Mecca].

I feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time.

I wanted to work on a cable show and with a writer/director because that's a much more fulfilling and freeing experience, as an actor.