Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.

The world doesn't fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.

But editors are still the world's readers. And thus the eyes of the world.

The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

... but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

[I]t's the child writer who has figured out, early on, that writing is about saving your soul.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference. I still didn't know the difference.

Nothing was a more powerful compass of my mood or a better indication of my self-worth than the number on the scale.

...but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

Well my gun fires seven different shades of shit, so what's your favorite color, punk?

We are fools in the stream of time, in moments of calm, we will laugh about ourselves.

...humanity learns true lessons only in cataclysm.

I wasn't sure I'd ever win again. Every time I got close, somebody seemed to play a little better.

I quit my job and for almost two years I didn't tell anyone, not even my family or friends. And for those two years I enrolled in acting classes. I acted in some capacity every single day.

Supreme good is like water. Water greatly benefits all things, without conflict. It flows through places that people loathe. Thereby it is close to the Way.

I don't take Hollywood too seriously. I have kids that don't give a damn about what I'm shooting, they just want dinner. So that keeps me grounded.

I wouldn't mind taking a rest for three or four months, but I have to keep on making films for the sake of my crew, who just wait for the next film because they're not on a fixed salary.

I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child

I knew I wanted to work in Cinemascope because I find it much more beautiful just in terms of the shape of the screen, the wider image, and it's also less like television, which is important.