For a long time I wasn't happy, but that had nothing to do with Beyonce. That had to do with me trying to get my life in order and make better decisions for myself. I'm seeing all these wonderful things happen for her, and I am happy for her. But I w...
Because I had children relatively late - in my 40s rather than in my 20s - it wasn't anything I ever knew that I would do. It kind of happened to me: I met the right woman and we had children. It was a revelation because it suddenly makes me realize,...
A miracle is never perfect when it happens, there are always little disappointments. But once it’s gone for good and nothing can change it, memory could make it perfect and then it would never change. If I can just call it to life now, won’t it a...
People ask, "Are you important enough for me to love you?" But they've got it all wrong. When you love someone, you make them important. And the same thing happens to you. You don't love them because they're important; they become important because y...
When I first lived in a model apartment... It was two bunk beds to a room, and the bathroom was constantly in use. I was bringing in Lucky Charms cereal, and one day an agent put a stop to that. She said, 'You're making all the girls fat.' They took ...
I happen to be extremely left-brained; my instinct is to draw a chart rather than a picture. I'm trying to get my right-brain muscles into shape. I actually think this shift toward right-brain abilities has the potential to make us both better off an...
If the world is to go beyond a curiosity well-guarded by cynicism in either academic tweeds or vulgar rap, YOUR POWER MUST BE EVIDENT IN MEETING MATERIAL NEEDS. And it can't just happen once. The world has seen us fail to make the difference here as ...
More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens....
The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the nex...
Sure I do a lot of jokes about Anne Frank. But when you do those jokes, it makes people remember what happened to her. That process of bringing her story back doesn't have to be a serious one. What I say is all nonsense, but it helps to keep her memo...
I usually start with an ending, then outline high points of things that happen, and kind of make up the rest as I go along. Occasionally, the characters surprise me, and I wonder how we got here. Other times, the characters are stubborn and won't do ...
When I first got sick, they told me I had a year to live, and I was writing my memoir really fast. There were really weird things happening with my nervous system and my heart and stuff, and it didn't look like I was gonna make it, so I was writing r...
[last lines] The Bartender: [on cassette tape] You'll have to make tough choices. You'll influence the past. Can we change our futures? I don't know. The only thing that I know for sure is that you are the best thing that's ever happened to me. I mis...
I read the 'Twilight' books before the movie and the whole craze happened. And then I loved it. I was in love with Edward before every other girl that says she's in love with him was. Because I read them a long time ago shooting a movie in Salt Lake ...
Richard Jeffries: You know, a lot of kids don't want to leave their first home, because they're afraid that if they do, their parents won't be able to find them. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen to you. [cut to August, who has tears running ...
Will Bloom: In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's w...
I try to remember everything, every thing, but sometimes I forget something. I don’t even know what it is sometimes, but I know it’s not coming to me, something about him isn’t coming to me and when that happens, when a piece is missing, it mak...
I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several y...
That which causes us trials shall yield us triumph: and that which make our hearts ache shall fill us with gladness. The only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve: which could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance...
I don't mean to offend anybody, but I think that we get a lot of scientists now who are bent into a system, and we lose some of their boldness by that. Obviously, you have to learn the ropes, but I think it's important to do that without hammering ou...
I just find the people I want to work with and put it all together, and it's a lot of hard work, and all kinds of catastrophes happen, but I don't really get too much resistance. But when you make a movie, it seems like there's nothing but resistance...