And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

Go to it. Be bold. Be true. Be kind. Rotate your tires. Don't drink so much. There aren't going to be enough liver transplants to go around.

The love of liberty is the love of others the love of power is the love of ourselves.

People is, I think, it's their nature - some people's nature, in a way, to be angry or jealous or just spiteful about somebody else's blessings.

Botswana had three successive good presidents who served their legal terms, who did well for their countries - three, not one.

Time is just something we invented to make motion seem simple.

If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

The one good thing is that I get a lot more good scripts coming through my letterbox. 'Vera Drake' raised my profile in one way, and then 'Harry Potter' in another.

Eventually, it came to this place like, "I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell." Man of Tai Chi became the story to tell.

Faith doesn't mean you don't have to do the work; it just means you're absolutely certain the work will pay off.

It wouldn't interest me to try to sound like Cop or something. It would be silly and soul-crushing.

Working is beautiful and rewarding, but acquisition of wealth for its own sake is disgusting.