Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and overlook the motive and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.

In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

When you write, you are telling a story...to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself...over and over again.

In the 'Hurt Locker' there's a lot of me in there, a sense of humor, a man of few words and a lot of action.

Mission is the practical demonstration, whether by speech or by action, of the glorious lordship of Jesus.

Every master has but one disciple, and that one becomes unfaithful to him, for he too is destined for master-ship.

In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.

It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.

I fight because it allows me to face my fears head on, and conquer those fears one by one.

All just laws condemn cruelty.

I love theaters. I love the event of going there and seeing a movie with a lot of people. I like the community coming around the story.