Write backwards. Start from the feeling you want the audience to have at the end and then ask "How might that happen?" continually, until you have a beginning.

Feeling intimidated is a good sign. Writing from a place of safety produces stuff that is at best dull and at worst dishonest.

There's a strange thing goes on inside a bubble. It's hard to describe. People who are in it can't see outside of it, don't believe there is an outside.

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.

She was my friend and I loved her and relied on her, even though there were days when her moodiness and fragility frightened me, because they reminded me of my own tenuous grasp on life.

I cry secretly. I don't really cry in front of anybody. I hate crying. I feel like it's not accomplishing anything. But when I lost my mother, I cried, and I cried big.

I enjoy small towns, I've got my friends there. I have friends in L.A. too, but I'm not much on traffic.

History has shown that at least one-half of every century is consumed in war.

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.

Los Angeles: where dreams go to make movies about themselves dying.

Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.

If there is a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things.

I feel 100% a Yamaha rider in my heart. I had a long career and raced with several factory bikes, but the highlight of my career is undoubtedly with Yamaha.