A hero would die for his country, but he'd much rather live for 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.

What we seek is never what we seek. That is why we may not recognize that we've found what we truly yearn for.

The choices I didn’t make are almost as ruinous as the ones I did.

Happiness is your own treasure because it lies within you.

I've mostly been focusing on writing, and I've really enjoyed not playing music. It will always be part of my life, but I don't feel the immediate need to be playing for people.

[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy . . .

One of my extraordinary regrets about my death is not so much that it's going to happen but simply that I'll never know what happens next.

I have a genuine belief in giving back to the community.

For me especially, I always need that literature medium.

I am, of course, romanticizing; a chronic tendency of mine.

If you're going to make music, you need to find the context in which it might be enjoyed.