Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.

The stars are on the inside. They are effing beautiful.

Fantasies hurt. They hurt hard and deep. They lifted you up to places that you could never reach, then they let you down with a crash.

We are dust furrowed by the painful plough of Destiny to give birth to the emptiness of a time.

They say the first of my kind was Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the languages of birds and was gifted with their form.

Streetlife serenaders Have no obligations Hold no grand illusions Need no stimulation.

We have the ability to become far more powerful and happy and healthy than we ever dreamed possible. At any age.

Everything that is not given is lost.

See your weakness as a reason to pray the more, it should not be the reason for sadness or to abandon your post.

I’m not a poet—I’m a drifter in the arts.