It's so ironic that you often hear these right-wing people talking about the Constitution.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Life is too magnificent to complain.

I love people who just started making movies - first-timers, second-timers. They take chances.

They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.

There are moments when I resent even buying a book. But browsing is wonderful. I like to go and browse everywhere, even fashion shops. You can get influences from anywhere.

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.

You get paid consistent with your ability to solve problems.

I don't really worry about a crowd liking me.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, believed to have one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world, girls and women face increased peril on the road to safety.

It seems odd, but people who see my films normally take them in in a deeper way than you would actually watch a film, let's say The Terminator or whatever.

Short isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient Wisdom delighted to convey its precepts, for the regulation of life and manners.