I always say that if you're a novelist, the challenge is not writing what you think ought to happen, but trying in some way to write what did happen in a world that doesn't necessarily exist.

I really don't know what "I love you" means. I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

You’re alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

People only lie because they are afraid of the truth

Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.

Humility of the soul

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

I get asked to do stupid things like panel shows and talk shows and things.

It is more important to prevent animal suffering, rather than sit to contemplate the evils of the universe praying in the company of priests.

The thing you realize as you get older is that parents don't know what the Hell they're doing and neither will you when you get to be a parent

On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, 'You have the right to remain silent.'

Money talks but it can't sing and dance and it don't walk.

You can't TV surf without coming across an Andy of Mayberry episode where you've just got to watch Don as Barney. And that's why I put Don in several of my movies.