I said, "It seems like you have fond feelings toward your ex-wife. Are you two still close?" "Nah," he said casually. "She thinks I changed my name to Motherfucker."

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect-only if they happen to be talking about Judaism.

There's nothing special about your fear.

Mistakes will be made. Failure will occur. You pick yourself up and carry on.

The story he [Todd Willingham] told me was this: He woke up to a fire. He ran out of the house and couldn't run back in to save his children, and that was enough to get me interested. ... There's a writer in me that's like, ... this is a great story. ... I have a good friend, who was my neighbor at the time, and I told her about it. ... She had been a reporter, and she was like, "Let's go investigate it."