Compassion doesn't have to be weak or enabling; it can also be quite bold.

Whatever you love, that will be an influence. It just will. So in effect the young writer's job is: go out and find some stuff to love.

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.

To me that really would be the essence of kindness, to have one's awareness so developed and refined that you could tell just what was needed, and not do any more or any less, and maybe not even be aware of what you had done, except it would be a helpful thing because of how fully present you were. Well, as Aerosmith once famously said: Dream on.

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

It seems to me that there are certain thoughts and vignettes and attitudes that I have always had the desire to represent.