Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians

In the new faith, there is only one commandment. It is this commandment, and this commandment alone, that must be followed to end the times of suffering, which are soon to come. FORSAKE USURY.

The only thing that makes the present palatable is the fact that the past was, at times, torture.

When we stop looking for someone to complete us, we find completion in ourselves.

We are ever capable of change and ever capable of being our better selves

We have a moral obligation to be interesting, for our gospel is loaded with life-and-death interest for people.

There are people who want to live and then the people who want to hold them down. I've tried to not be one of the latter my entire life.

The social costs, and the increased tax costs due to addicted gamblers, stay behind

The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away.

If you run the ball, you control the clock. If you control the clock, you usually control the game.

It is thyself, mine own self's better part; Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart; My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim, My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.