Life is the first gift love is the second and understanding the third.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

thinking about tracking. . . . Sometime in grade school, already your fate was settled, your socialclass was established for the rest of your life.

I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.

Where do dreams come from?...they slink out of books, they lurk in the stacks of libraries. Out of pages turned they rise like the scent of peonies and infect the brain with their promises.

Drifting with things is a habit it takes almost dying to break.

they were in love with apocalypse, like all men, more in love with myths than with any woman.

When will women not be compelledto view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained?When will a woman ceaseto be made of pain?

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done

We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

People were not getting back what they wanted for their sold labor. Taxes grew and services shrank. Prices rose and quality decayed. Everywhere people felt used and betrayed and coerced and cheated.

Farming with live animals is a 7 day a week, legal form of slavery.

I was certified to take x-rays, but you can't just show up and start cleaning people's teeth.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can't define it beyond that.

On Creating — What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, you realize you're standing on another trapdoor.

You are the captain of your own ship; don't let anyone else take the wheel.

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company.

Going through your late teens and early 20s is not an easy time, especially in Hollywood. So you just learn your lessons, you make your mistakes and you move on.

I don't think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat.