Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying.

You are only pretentious if you are not sincere.

Sports is a bloodless rehearsal of confrontation, and everyone shakes hands or high fives or fist bumps at the end to show that everything is okay.

I don't know if you've ever been shoved into the bow of a nutshell pram, a boat that is very easily almost liftable with one hand, and quite tippy, and is being piloted by a 12-year-old, but it is the true feeling of having your life in someone else's hands, and it's very precarious.

Well, I always had this desire to celebrate and somehow be a part of things that I thought were really great.

From a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that.

So much of creativity is the feeling that you're either getting a gift from some other dimension or some other part of yourself.