I want to write stories that don't help you escape life, but embrace life.

In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

People are usually pretty hungry after a funeral. I guess it's because we all realize that time is running out and we better eat all we can. Please don't mention that to my mother.

I feel like there's a certain kind of laughter missing in the world.

I don't want to write my life. I live my life. I want to make up a new world.

There is nothing more depressing than toast that no one eats.

People love conversation, and movies are conversations, and an audience has to participate; it has to fill in some blanks.

I spent so many years trying to become an actor, trying to be a person that I wasn't.

I want to make accessible movies for bright people, but I don't want to play games and be coy.

The bigger the budget, the less an audience is trusted, and that's the difference between a big-budget film and a small-budget film.

My job as a dramatist is to find out where these characters want to go, and make it as hard as possible for them to get there.

His lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever.

Worry’s magnetic attraction can only be broken by a stronger attraction, and David is saying [in Psalm 27] we can only find that attraction in God Himself.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

Our men and women in uniform deserve the best intelligence possible to help them protect America.

I like stories with a collision of disparate tones. Look at 'Shameless' or 'House of Lies'. They go from big, silly, and comedic to very real dramatic moments in the wink of an eye.

I don't really do very well when I'm sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that.

Saddam was tranquillised when captured ... He would be a lion even when caged. Every honest person who knows Saddam knows that he is firm and powerful.

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream

Look at a gown of gold, and you will at least get a sleeve of it.