When I was growing up, I was always on stage but I loved other things.

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

Mercury poisoning sounds like a rich man's disease . . . like something you might get from the leather seats in your Lamborghini.

If someone mistakes your kindness for weakness, that's their fault - not yours. And it's OK to be a decent human being in this life.

If masturbation is a crime then I should be on death row.

Sometimes - this is a tough one - not everyone can handle the truth. Sometimes you have to take a beat. But if you can take that beat, and take the high road, it'll serve you in the long run.

The Dalai Lama was once asked for his favorite chant, and he said it was better not to have a favorite anything, which I think is a great thought.

Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.

I want to be radical on the inside, but not on the outside.

We all have so many different elements inside of us and we're not all one thing.

What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be that guy.

Life is all we need.

Kindness is true wisdom—not cleverness.

Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.

There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear.

I know people that I respect and admire and look up to who have had extra-marital affairs.

The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.

Did you ever sit quietly with your back straight, not moving, just only cherishing the beauty of silence?

When I say work I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

Ours was a storytelling family even in pleasing times, and in those days my parents looked on words as our sustenance, rich in their flavor and wholesome for the soul.

I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don't think that's the right way of making a decision about whether you're going to back a film or not.