If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

Less is more.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A clear sentence is no accident.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

Although reality can sometimes corrupt the fairy tale and alter our ambitions, some things remain unalterable. From the richest to the poorest, we start and end with family.

[i]We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter.[/i]

Shakespeare's last play was called The Tempest. It wasn't called just plain Tempest. The name of my record is just plain Tempest. It's two different titles.

Anybody auditions for X-Factor it's because they want to be famous, not because they are artists.

I was the nerdy one. I always played those kind of characters until Mad Men.

There will be no feeding problems because you can either eat for pleasure, or you don't have to eat at all!

You can love someone like your son, even if he's not your biological son, and you can love someone like your father, even if he's not your biological father.

I've been dealing with epic images, and I realized all of a sudden that I grew up in the age of epics.

I don't have a good British accent.

As an actor you're used to being the focus of attention.