I love Dickens. I love the way he sets a scene.

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

My wife, the star I steer by.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

It is better to live ready than to get ready!

These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper

I feel like everyone kind of knew someone, like 6 degrees of separation. In Hollywood that is very common.

It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty.

God gave humans the truth, and the devil came and he said, 'Let's give it a name and call it religion.'

Feminism is teaching. I've gotten a lot of pleasure pushing younger writers that I've met and worked with.

I mean, I find things that happened in real life to be the funniest - things that you observe instead of crazy abstract things, you know.

Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?

I hadn't thought about the fact that I was a foster child but, did notice that (in films) I'm often without a mother or father or both.