Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.

Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area.

It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.

I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.

Privacy above all else. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

Never think of hurting anyone else, if you do, you are already hurting yourself.

I read obituaries every day to learn what sorts of lives are available to us, to see an entire life compressed into a few column inches, to fit the whole story in my eye at once.

That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).

Mommy smoked but she didn't want us to. She saw smoke coming out of the barn one time, so we got whipped.

Hope is an essential constituent of human life.

Content is the meaningful substance of the work.

We can solve world peace and world famine.

Knowledge without understanding is useless.

My final historical romance came out December 2005. While I enjoyed writing medieval romances, I was also dying to write something with more edge.

I made a big mistake. It is indefensible and I am sorry.