So, good news/bad news: good news that I'm progressing; bad news that life is short and art is long.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

In a materialistic society, there’s no such a thing as a ‘romantic’ broke man.

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.

I think that if people get my music, then they get what my message is.

To make [parents] happy, I went to Fordham University for three weeks, while at the same time running ads in Variety, "magician-actor David Copperfield."

I don’t have any mottoes. If I did I would forever be contradicting them.

You're not going to do good work if you're not choosing something because it inspires you.

Jews have a tendency to become comedians.

If you get one photograph that's good from a trip, that's plenty.