Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

I write to be a part of something - a world made up of words and ideas, which are sometimes painfully criticized, gratefully loved and can never be destroyed.

Truth never dies but lives a wretched life.

I've been sober for two-and-a-half years, My children are happy. In August, my wife and I will celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. My band is back together with a sold-out tour.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

I try not to bring in anything I don't love looking at. It's about restaint ... There is something about an unfinished quality that leaves within you that sense of possibility.

It's interesting to watch where music is going next. Isn't it always rotating? It is so weird how disposable pop music is, even mine. It just goes by so fast.

People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.

When people want to inspire you to turn against some group of people, they'll often use empathy.

Drummers are conductors - we set the pace for the music - so if you're not relaxed and feeling right, the whole thing goes out the window.

Sometimes and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war.