When you make a choice as a writer about what it is you want to write, and what it is you're going to spend six months thinking about, you have to fall in love.

The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.

If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

Firms are a bit concerned about things like oil prices and US growth but actually the change (in firms expectations) is quite small so I think broadly theyre looking for more of the same.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

Generally, I read nonfiction. Theres very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.

I just try and do something good. But as a writer, you're slightly out of control.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

Your friends can be double-edged knife thy can either nurture you or destroy you. Choose them Wisely......

Any fool can tell a story. Take a few odds and ends of things that happen to you, dress them up, shuffle them about, add a dash of excitement, a little color, and there you have it.

Everyone's a singer now, thanks to karaoke, for better and for much worse. But the live band is now becoming ancient history in Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma.

Grace / to be born and live as variously as possible

The stereotype of aging as a progressive loss of function is generally true only for people who stop functioning.

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.

If they'd said, "Do you want to be John Wesley Harding or Wesley Stace in 25 years' time?" I would have said Wesley Stace, but I wasn't to know.

Just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt.

But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.

...love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.