Honestly, the choice is: I can be a cheerful person, more awake to correction, more of a force for good ... when I'm writing. Or I can be the opposite of all those things, when I'm not writing.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

The head of every family will be what Abraham was, the patriarch, the priest and the unlettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the code of laws to all mankind.

People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.

There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.

I bet the pill is harder to get than drugs--which shows how screwed up this world really is!

Prevent your day at morning.

The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.

I get a lot of "Shut up, Matilda." I probably get as many "Shut up, Matildas" as Wil Wheaton gets "Shut up, Wesleys." That was an actual line on his show, though.

It has absolutely no meaning to me to be an executive producer on a film that I have nothing to do with except come to the wrap party or the premiere on; it's just meaningless.