If you've got kids you know you've only got one prayer: "Let my kids outlive me." That's the bottom of everything.

The goals are not about the sweet smell of success as much as it's about enjoying a damn day on the movie set... I live in a complete state of grace.

My career was always full of risks one way or another, and that's the way I like it.

The best reason to go to the movies is to be with other people. Eating the popcorn, being with other people you don't know.

It's not good to meet you heroes. The humanity in them or the a**hole in them will bring it down. And you don't want to do that.

Art has absolutely changed my life.

I'm just gonna be real grateful to be on any freaking movie set for the rest of my life.

I went to North Texas State, one of the great jazz schools. When I realized I wasn't going to be Miles Davis, I switched my major to English and theater.

I rarely do autograph shows. Maybe two or three a year. Just to keep my price up. Also I've got too much other stuff to do. I have to teach Renaissance art.

Television is an isolating experience, sadly enough. I'm sorry to say it. But as good as it ever gets, it's still isolating. You sit in your home and visit with no one.

I'm finishing my Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance history.

The human body is not necessarily a human being.

I shall write peace upon your wings, and you shall fly around the worldso that children will no longer haveto die this way.

I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist, but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

A calm mind helps our human intelligence to assess the situation realistically.

Artists who say that they're artists: usually people who need a job.

The common man knows exactly what he wants...and deserves to get it good and hard.

The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people.

Never, ever condescend to the reader. Assume you are writing for someone better and smarter than you are. This will protect you from conventionalism, faddishness, and cliché.

Never make a big decision without sleeping on it.

But Mitt Romney understands, like I understand, that people - not governments - create jobs.