My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.

Belgrade has kind of a Dublinesque, dear-dirty charm.

Much of directing [a movie] is not directing but just listening and being present in the moment and just keeping your eyes open.

If you make something interesting, inevitably not everybody is going to like it.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

All my favorite movies are somebody else's least favorite movie.

You come out of each movie just thinking, "God, if we can fool them into letting us make just one more, we can get it right."

Writing sucks. I think it's terrible. Writing is not fun, and don't trust anyone who claims to enjoy it. Liars!

Writing in a lot of ways feels more like excavation than construction. It feels like you're uncovering this thing bit by bit, discovering what it is, instead of constructing it upwards.

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

Do not thou hasten above the most Highest: for thy haste is in vain to be above him, for thou hast much exceeded.

With writing, i can do everything. Make nothing to be something, and then make something to big thing. So, i know, that nothing and big thing is so true as same thing

When I think of the most beautiful women, they're not supermodels.

It's gaudy, ugly, and in terribly bad taste. It does, however, suit my personality almost perfectly.

Creativity in all forms of life, from arts to business to domestic situations, depends on our ability to recognize and explore gaps

There was violence because first of all, there were ethnic differences and names. If you were small, they called you a runt, and you had to do something about that even if there were five other guys.

I'm probably always guilty for rooting for a long series. Not either side - I don't really care who wins the game, but it makes for more compelling TV the more games you go deeper into a series.

Conventional cancer therapy is so toxic and dehumanizing that I fear it far more than I fear death from cancer.

Humor is essential to survival. Funny poems are vastly underrated. Very underwritten.

Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement.