I prefer true over happy now.

A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market - it knows nothing about target markets.

Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.

Love is a luxury. It's something that people are allowed to indulge in when they're not simply trying to survive and keep other people alive.

If you look at the world one way, it takes from you - it's a thief of time, energy, creative mojo. But if you look at the world another way, it gives you an endless supply of motivation.

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

Red Sox fans have been pushed to the brink over the years, but that's how faith grows stronger.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.

The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.

The holy country is occupied by holy citizens.

The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.

The sad fact is that spending rises every year, no matter what people want or say they want.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

How sweet war is to such as know it not.

The tune was too ingrained for Mortenson to consider the novelty of this moment- an American, lost in Pakistan, singing a German hymn in Swahili.

The possibilities of the art of combination are not infinite, but they tend to be frightful.

There's no doubt 'normal' is changing - spring actually came a month early in Alaska, for example, and we had to stop filming.

I would like to do a movie in space, but I think it would be difficult to do it on location.