I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.

But writers and their woes: they couldn't be parted. Not for anything.

Children, Hadley thinks to herself, children are more civilised than this gang on the sauce.

She kissed him but he didn't seem to recognize it.

The hangover: such a cure, she thinks, for overthinking.

Talents too many, not enough of any.

The longer I don't write, the more I hurt.

No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.

Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.

Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.

Paris without a good book is like a pretty girl with only one eye.

It’s not how long you live that matters, it’s how well you live.

Work hard. Work smart. Remain grounded. Serve others and be enthusiastic.

Why do people who read Shakespeare still spend hours watching shitty TV or staring out of the window or arguing about whose dinner party to go to?

Stop Dieting...Start Eating CUte

I'd like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that's not just e-mail with a view.

If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on.

I never intended to be a documentary filmmaker. I think I became a documentary filmmaker because I had trouble writing, and I had trouble finishing things.

Unintended consequences, he thought miserably. He was angry at his anger, the way it surged up and took over.

There are and will be those who think I have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so.

When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.