When I read any book, if it's really good I get lost in the writing whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I'm in the story not thinking about who wrote it.

In college, I had a big fixation with Southern Gothic literature. Flannery O'Connor, I read every word she's ever written.

There's nothing I love more than a great truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story.

Myth is very powerful and fiction is very powerful.

For me personally, I love art and artists of all mediums and we've seen madness is more often than not present in the greatest painters, poets, writers, and songwriters in history.

In terms of legend, people do have a need, but I think you can't have a legend without the work or the art that comes before it.

When work resonates with a person, whether it is literature or film or music, then they want to know more about the artist. That's very natural.

What is fiction or cinema if not escape?

You always want to unmask the person and find out who they are - that feeling of wanting what you can't have.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world

God dramatically slew one monstrous opponent and then threw us into the arena against a stronger and more vicious foe.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

There wasn't a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.

If I could play any character from the book though it’d be Church. Who wouldn’t want to be a cat?!

Democracy, like life, is hard to learn and doesn't have a teacher.

A person cannot all of a sudden become good at what they do just by switching streams.

Loneliness is more likely to lead to fussy housekeeping than to grand views of the Universe.

He was Death, and he'd ridden in on a pale horse.

Leadership is communicating people's worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it themselves.