With a television series, there's a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you're not writing well.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

An artist’s job is to captivate… if we stumble into truth, we got lucky.

Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.

A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you're not in the room.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

People who make mistakes are in the best position to make better choices.

Divine love is limitless and the source of miracles.

Avoid witticisms at the expense of Others.

I had a pretty steep learning curve in film - as I'm still learning.

You don't always have to have the most amazing story. It's learning to share the story you have that counts.

The difficult opponent is the best.

When you get to the top, raise the top and climb some more.

You have to maintain your principles but have a broader appeal.

Kids who drink alcohol, fairly regularly before they're 14 have a 48% chance... of becoming alcoholics.

I do use art as a site of protest, particularly in relation to dominant narratives.