The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.

I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that's the job of art.

One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

Fear is a ghost; embrace your fear, and all you’ll see in your arms is yourself.

As a matter of writing philosophy, if there is one, I try not to ever plot a story. I try to write it from the character's point of view and see where it goes.

I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

I read poetry every day. I love the boiled down essence of poetry. I look for poetry in prose. In a way that evocative.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Most young men are such bores. They haven't lived long enough to learn that they are not the wonders to the world they are to their mothers.

If you attack Ann Coulter, you don't end up with your cat killed or your tires slashed.

I took the stairs and felt like my childhood took the elevator.

If each one of us could make just one other happy, the whole world would know happiness.

Most human beings live like a bird in a cage whose door was blown away. Out of habit, too busy gold-plating the cage, they do not soar to the ultimate possibility.

People should know whatever it is you love to do. I am a living testament to the fact that you can do it. You can do whatever it is you put your mind to and you can do it in stilettos.

I get very cranky when interrupted. I snap at people, sigh dramatically and slam my door shut.

I want to get rich and die old.

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

A lot of actors said they hated the studio system, but I loved it. It was like a college; it was a great place to learn.