I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.

What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.

I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.

Each person has a literature inside them.

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Be more than ready. Be present in your discipline. Remember your gift. Be grateful for your gift and treat it like a gift. Cherish it, take care of it, and pass it on.

You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.

This is why some relationships look so beautiful and some look so tragic — beauty belongs to the thoughtful

Whatever creative success I gained was due to my belief that creative power can be stepped up by effort, and that there are ways in which we can guide our creative thinking.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means might appear different the ends are the same.

The idea is that the content is the interface, the information is the interface, not computer-administrative debris.

You do not characterize by telling the reader about the character. You do it by showing the character thinking, speaking and acting in a characteristic way. You simply show it and shut up.

That little touch is not in the books, but I wish it had been in the books because it was a great addition.

I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet. Not only must you learn to accept their gaze with your eyes but also with your heart.

…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?