There is the moral spectrum in 'Fargo, ' and you see it in other Coen brothers movies, where you have a very good character on one end and a very bad character on the other.

Let's not forget how beautiful simply washing dishes can be.

In a book you can really talk about ideas and themes and characters in a deeper way than you can even on the screen.

Some roads you shouldn't go down. Because maps used to say there were dragons here. Now they don't. But that don't mean the dragons aren't there.

There's still nothing like a book to really make you feel like you've disappeared into a world.

There's only one note you ever get in broadcast and that's clarity.

If I have to write on an airplane or get up early to write or write late, you just gotta sit down. When you have the time, you have to be able to do it.

It's good to be unexpected with it.

My feeling has always been if you entertain people, they give you permission to do more on a thematic or character level.

In the TV business, you've got to write fast, and someone will tell you, "Can you rewrite this episode before... 6 p.m.?" So that's when you rewrite it. You can't wait for the muse to show up.

In this way he used her as the North Star on a journey where you always want to go south. It was helpful, aligning himself in this way. It gave him something to tune to, like a violin to a piano.

The beauty of a loving smile has a timeless freshness.

Well tarnation you're a meanie pants aren't you?" ~Miss Mary~

Whate'er we leave to God God does and blesses us.

A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.

It's always fun when you're doing the CGI stuff, to actually get to work with someone who is real, who's there.

The greatest glory never comes from falling, but from rising each time you fall.

Smiles, like humor, are the most serious and complex forms of communication used by human beings.

What is important is how much service you can give the world and how much you can get done and how much better you can make things.

I think Hillary Clinton's a very clever politician but she would be too easy to stereotype the way John Kerry was.

Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living. And they can kill the living.