This isn’t like a job we have while we go to college. This is what we like — feed ourselves with.

I was a very self-righteous 15-25 year old. Anyway, I wake up every morning and thank God I'm not a kid anymore.

I was raised by a single psychologist mother and we spent every evening sitting at the kitchen table and dissecting our emotions and speculating about the inner life of everyone we knew.

I never had a lot of ideas. I always have exactly one that is the next project; the idea of a project beyond that project is ludicrous.

Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

I'm terrible at speaking extemporaneously about my work - I get completely tongue-tied and consumed with fear.

I think growing up in a small town, the kind of people I met in my small town, they still haunt me. I find myself writing about them over and over again.

Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.

I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.

There are certain early plays of mine that I really don't like, but I can't imagine going back and fixing them. I would be totally incapable of it. I'm not in the head of the characters anymore.

If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.

Selling is a sacred trust between buyer and seller.

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.

Life is not a competition with others. Life is a competition with yourself—to do your personal best each day.

If you catch poisonous fish, throw it back into the sea.

Debate is the death of conversation.

I think people ought to do what they feel useful at the time. If I do things because I ought to do them, I switch off.

I've seen a lot of pairs of guys that have been hanging out together way too long-until they're laughing all the time.

Are you an angel that approaching you should be so terrifying?

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

Giving a child an education is by far one of the most important investments we can make.