My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don't have to do special penance for that. The crime and the penance, in that case, coincide perfectly. They are identical.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.

Life operates exactly like the Star Wars prequels. It’s boring, bloated, painful when it shouldn’t be, and lacks a cohesive storyline. And ultimately, it only exists to boost the ego of its creator.

Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

Right now I'd say my favorite fashion designer is Zac Posen.

Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

It is simpler and easier to flatter people than to praise them.

If you accept failure as learning, it's not discouraging to keep adapting until you find success.

I love what I do, I love my job.

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds.

It wasn’t so much that I was positive. I just wasn’t fully subscribing to such a negative way of thinking anymore.

Being a working person who works for the studios. It's a minefield and there's tons of stuff you need to know. And people mess it up all the time.