If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there... When nothing new can get in, that's death.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

A sober friend from Texas said once that the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you. I hate this insight so much.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be given space and trust.

I'd love to say I made the smart decision of picking projects that became hits, but with 'The Good Wife,' I read the script and something inside me said, 'I love this, I want to do this.'

Nowhere in the world is safe," Count Olaf said. Not with you around," Violet agreed. I'm no worse than anyone else," Count Olaf said.

You can't fake competence, creativity, or sexual arousal.

Look what scares you in the face and try to understand it. Empathy is revolutionary.

What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

Nothing good comes of reading other people's emails.

Not till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"-above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." shall we have it.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.