I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

People blame their failures on past birth, destiny, surroundings, and rarely to self in the order of their evolved mental state. The converse is rather more true for the successful people.

I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away.

In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking.

Pipe-smokers spend so much time cleaning, filling and fooling with their pipes, they don't have time to get into mischief.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

I like playing in other projects.

The killing of innocent people is a sin.

Listening to your own sets and listening to the audience as you perform. It's a conversation of sorts. There is an exchange.

Never bend the rules. You bend the rules a little bit and then it's a slippery slope.