His grandmother had taught him that there was no such thing as coincidence. There are millions of people in this world, she had told him, and the spirits will see that most of them, you never have to meet. But there are one or two that you are tied t...
I feel like 'Gossip Girl' isn't really 'Gossip Girl' anymore when they're away at school because they don't go to NYU; they go to, like, Yale and Brown. New York City is just as much a character as anyone else in the books, and I was really sort of r...
I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born t...
I love the night. Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. It's dark and silent in the house, but if I listen close, I hear the beat beat beat of my heart. I hear the creak and crack of the house. I hear my mum b...
The more he loved and was loved, the better his life got. At once it seemed to Jack like a magical solution to everything. If only everyone loved everyone else! Then there would be no trouble in the world. It seemed so easy. If we all just reached ou...
Under normal circumstances, if the centerpiece of a president's campaign is helping the disadvantaged and we are our brother's keeper, the idea that this same guy has an actual brother living in third-world poverty without any help from Obama, this w...
If the years have taught me one thing it's that those who care are always scarce. Those who genuinely care; not the acquaintances, false friends or those with similar aspirations. The few who seek your company, the souls who would plainly step off th...
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking...a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pr...
There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface...
False Humanitarian's This world is full of so many false humanitarians. People who see suffering right before there eyes.These people who have enough to help a friend,a family member,an acquaintance in need. But they choose who they want to help. Bec...
Identity We live in a world where people define themselves by occupation. And we identify ourselves by what material possessions we have. House,cars,money,clothes etc. Take away all that and you lost your identity. Sadly to say these are the things t...
This is what the Apologists can teach us about the world, culture, and philosophy. The pendulum steadily swings between contempt and wonder. The aim is not compromise between these stances, rather we need both the extremes of the swing simultaneously...
People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not th...
We might have a different height and different color. But we all have parents, so we are brother and sister. We all have a different goal and a different vision. We all like to live in peace and that is our mission. We like to share our love and the ...
I would say that all our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives spiritual import - what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about us, as understood today. There's no r...
The Getsmart Prayer I do my laundry and you do yours, I am not in this life to listen to your ceaseless yammering, And you are not in this world for any discernable reason at all. You are you, and I am I, and I got the better deal. And if by chance w...
The book that is the closest genetically to 'Goon Squad' is 'Look at Me.' It has the futuristic element - although, freakishly, almost every aspect I invented has come to pass in some way, including the terrorist who fantasies about blowing up the Wo...
He kept his head down and slowly worked himself, word by word, back into communion with the other hours, days, years - there was in fact no name for this particular unit of time - that together formed a continuum of unawareness that was as close to t...
All force strives forward to work far and wide To live and grow and ever to expand; Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side By the world's flux and swept along like sand: In this internal storm and outward tide We hear a promise, hard to underst...
I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. ...
There's a lot of wishful thinking that somehow we'll replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, but they remain far from reality. We're not going to run Wal-Mart, Disney World, and the interstate highway system on any combination of altern...
