You can only write, 'Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.'

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.

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

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.

Most people only have stray thoughts and it stays at that. But you’ve got power, darlin'. You flung out walking evil. Let's hope you can bring up a remedy too.

The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things.

But his singing was unconscious and irrepressible - an expression of his native exuberance, the dreamy, buoyant soundtrack running through his head.

When you become famous, being famous becomes your profession.

My solo album is dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.

I'd make a wonderful Lady Macbeth. I'll wear a pair of platform shoes or something.

Libertarian: everyone leaves everyone else alone

You need to eat, but you don't really need to eat filet mignon every night or buy bottles of champagne at a thousand a pop.

That's what life is all about: Let's have a party. Let's have it tonight.

The swiftest despatch seems slow to desire.