I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids liked to work with their hands as much as I did. I was an only child so I did ...
In my first year, when I was driving in runs, winning games and making headlines, there was an old man who came to games at Seals Stadium, and one day he called me over, introduced himself and told me not to believe anything written about me or think...
Acting so obviously submissive to Max around strangers, I felt a lot of humiliation. The looks from people, the comments. But I also felt this strange sense of pride. I am his possession, his property. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of how happy I ...
A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapors which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which,...
Knowledge extends in promontories and bays; or to put it vertically rather than horizontally, the strata from remote to recent never lie so unbroken that we cannot find some line of unconformity where the imagination must make a leap. There are so ma...
I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn't hold me back and my teachers couldn't criticize me. That's how my career a...
On the field, you have to be aggressive; you're thinking how to get the better of a situation. It's not that I don't laugh on the field. In fact, I think it's very important to laugh, especially when you are angry and aggressive, to just take the ten...
I am constantly swimming on the margin, neither 100% American, French, nor Lebanese. I am none of those. I am the result of those three. Sometimes it's an asset: no one can put you in a category. That I do not make typical Lebanese, European or Ameri...
Is suicide the last thing in live, that you can do, which makes us a human again? Is death a good way, to show the world, that I was in pain? Who would be there crying for you, after my death? Yes, I know what you are going to say "Your family and fr...
I'm not totally blind to the fact that I like people to see my work, but if it's not something I would enjoy seeing in a magazine, then I think I shouldn't be making it. I think that I don't represent only myself, I represent more people; I mean, if ...
I don't watch my own past films: when I watch them, I find they don't work very well, because I have changed. If I continue to make films, in fact, it is because I always want to repair my films. My inner rhythm has changed; I have changed. I have ch...
A lot of people who don't write for kids think it's easy, because they think kids aren't as smart as they are, or that you have to dumb down what you would normally write for kids. But I think you have to work harder when you write for kids, to make ...
I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which mean...
Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, 'I want to do standup in 30 minutes,' and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, 'I want to do standup in a few weeks in this ...
No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may adapt your work in a way you don't like, then you don't sell the option. You know when you sell it that they will hav...
As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between is...
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...
I like to take on the thing I don't like at the moment. I like to find something that looks wrong or feels off, something that I would never have done in the past, like brocade. And then all of a sudden, if we can make brocade work, then we've really...
I'm going to start work on developing a series for HBO, because I'm naturally given to episodic stories of considerable length. And I won't have to listen to complaints about how wordy and long my work is if you can watch it on your telephone on the ...
Anybody can have this body if you do enough sit-ups and you just make a decision that 'Every day, I'm going to work out.' There are some days that I just don't feel like doing it, and I don't. But more often than not I get up and I get on the treadmi...
It's my belief that, since the end of the Second World War, psychology has moved too far away from its original roots, which were to make the lives of all people more fulfilling and productive, and too much toward the important, but not all-important...