When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.

In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.

Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.

No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.

Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

In comedy laughter settles all arguments.

Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

I have often said that loneliness is the predominant attitude in our culture. A person can be lonely in the midst of a party

Grief's darkness fades in the sunlight of thanksgiving.

Everything from toy guns that spark To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark It's easy to see without looking too far That not much is really sacred.

Coming into the Games I knew I was in five events but I didn't expect to get a medal in every distance, especially the 5,000.

The imagination is not an escape, but a return to the richness of our true selves; a return to reality.

I instinctively want to create pop songs and I think it's really good to challenge that, otherwise it becomes a habit.

never say never that's my favorite quote

Blessed the geniuses who know / that egomania is not a duty.

This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.

Though man or angel judge my life and read it like an open scroll, And weigh my heart, I have judge more just than any—my own soul.