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.

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

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.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy

A child may be "spoiled" by a lack of training or by inappropriate love that gives or trains incorrectly.

If your enemy has the power to see into the future, make sure you are the author of that future.

Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother ... when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.

I wouldn't say I invented tacky, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity.

A man's penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments.

Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life.

Parents tell us things to protect us, or they educate us from their own misinformation or misconceptions.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.