What monster sleeps in the deep of your story? You need a monster. Without a monster there is no story.

Poetry is the struggle against the simplification, codification, and mummification of language, it serves as a constant redirect - moving us to the experience to which the words point.

The story writes you as much as you write it. And the process of re-writing isn't so much a quest to re-write the story as it is to re-write the writer.

The burning off and the gathering together are one.

As a writer, you can’t get to where you want to be, coming from the place you started, unless you have something extremely important you want to say to someone who really doesn’t want to know.

The answer to the question, 'where's the drama?' is another question: 'what's the problem?

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity

The richest people in the world are the people that love the most

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

I have a lot of screenwriter friends and many of them have had an experience where they aren't even welcome on set during production.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

I could never be on stage on my own. But puppets can say things that humans can't say.

Do you think if the stamp-act is repealed, that the North Americans will be satisfied?

It's never wise to laugh at things you don't understand...If you're not careful, they might start laughing back at you.