I'm living in the heart of gun culture, but I'm not a gun guy. I didn't grow up with them; I was never a hunter; my dad was never a hunter.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

The brain stays up all night telling stories while we sleep. We just call them dreams.

We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with 'Once upon a time.'

Story is where people go to practice the key skills of human social life.

If you want to burrow a message into a human mind. Work it into a story

Human minds yield helplessly to the suction of story. No matter how hard we concentrate, no matter how deep we dig in our heels, we just can't resist the gravity of alternate worlds.

We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.

We are a species addicted to a stories.

When you spar in boxing, the only thing that gets hurt is your brain. Everything else feels pretty good.

I think the proper attitude toward fighting sports is one of ambivalence. You can be drawn to them, but you should also be repelled by them.

A person doesn't have to change who he is to become better.

sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning

Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.

Reciprocity of sensation is not possible because to share is to be robbed.

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.

I love karate, it's like a bible to me. But deep inside I'm so I mean, I'm so sensitive.

I used to want to be a children's writer, because I would have all these great ideas when I was little, and I'd write them and draw them, and turn them into class.

From my mother, a rock, / I have learned that rocks give / most of all.

For we must bear in mind that the greater number of garden pictures known to us are taken from tombs.