I've had a very sheltered life. What can happen to you if you stay home writing all day?

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.

Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.

Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun.

Sometimes it helps to scold yourself, to give yourself advice.

I feel happy to terrify kids.

When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.

The only lesson is, you gotta keep at it.

Everything that has happened to me has been amazing and surprising.

Who is more irrational, the guy who believes in a God he can't see, or a guy who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?

If we all die and there is no God, then it's just eternal unconsciousness, you'll never know, but if you're wrong... you'll know forever.

...Bad leaders are known to destroy one, more or even all of the foundations of their people’s way of life...

The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don't.

The road to the sacred leads through the secular.

I wear no makeup in real life. I'm very simple. That may be why I go over the top for the red carpet. But otherwise, I'm very plain. I should make more of an effort, actually.

I'm lively when I perform and I always put everything into a show, but when I get home I love lying down in front of the TV and relaxing.

It's not unexpected for me to be in a comedy film anymore; I'm no longer the underdog in that world.

Drugs and alcohol can be so destructive.

One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings.

Most of these other negro leaders who are supposedly integrationists aren't that intelligent [like Reverend Galamison].

But like of each thing that in season grows.