If you can't play all the instruments in the orchestra of story, no matter what music may be in your imagination, you're condemned to hum the same old tune.

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

Life is chaotic and meaningless, and you have to find your meaning. You must find the answer, you can't just live. That's the point of story: helping you find your meaning in life.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Influence is just persuasion in slow motion.

God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don't trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It's a sure sign that they don't really know anyone.

Ipsa scientia potestas est. (Knowledge itself is power.)

Like mimic meteors the snow, In silence out of Heaven sifts.

And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.

You really need to be on the edge and you have to keep your eyes open.

When I get up, the first thing I do is open up Gmail and check my personal email.

I'm the tortoise in the race, but I'm a joyful tortoise.

So also there are tides and floods in the affairs of men, which in some are slight and may be kept within bounds, but in others they overmaster everything.

No one can be Gilda twenty-four hours a day.

For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?