If you can socialize from the privacy of your desk at night in a dark room, you can be a smoother, cooler, funnier, sexy, more everything person than you actually are in real life.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

DARE TO BE IRRESISTIBLE!

We raise predators by treating children as prey.

Pay attention. Be alert. Don't be in denial. Learn

The best part of your story is when it changes.

Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.

I report as a machine; I write as a person. That clear dichotomy softens the transition.

My autobiography is one of the truest, most frankly written books ever published in the western hemisphere.

A man should carry nature in his head.

In heaven above, And earth below, they best can serve true gladness Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

I will wear tights even if it's 100 degrees outside. Tights are my safety blanket.