(F)iction is...what ought to have been, not what actually was. At least, not exactly.

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.

I felt very close to God.... My friends say that's because I was always on my knees.

I adhere to the philosophy, "I don't care who writes the laws, let me write the songs."

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer, songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

Thus, a godly man wonders at his cross that it is not more, a wicked man wonders his cross is so much.

From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?

From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.

One man's bane is another's bliss.

The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.

It’s critical that young people start flexing their creative muscles in order to take on the world's most complex challenges.