I'm so interested in the fact that we really don't know anybody. We think we know the people close to us, but we don't, we really don't.

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

Traits don't change, states of mind do.

I actually see myself in all my characters. In order to imagine what it feels like to be another person I have to use my own experiences and responses to the world.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

People like to think the younger generation's job is to steer the world to hell. But it's never true, is it? They're hopeful and good - and that's how it should be.

Or maybe, he thought, returning to the boxes, it was part of being Catholic--you were made to feel guilty about everything

I do write by hand. I just think - I don't know, it's a physical thing for me. It's a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for.

I come from a home where gravy is a beverage.

Another superb movie about a mature marriage grounded in a fundamental lack of communication is Dodsworth, based on the Sinclair Lewis novel.

The world is extremely interesting to a joyful soul.

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity.

Arrogance is a veneer -- a thin covering of excuses hiding deep performance deficiencies.

We're not perfect. We're a work in progress. But man, America has gotten a lot of things right.

I believe above the storm, the smallest prayer will still be heard. I believe that someone in that great somewhere hears every word.

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.

Raise your limits as high as you dare and then take them a little further.