Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.

...let the emotional weight of a scene rest on the dialogue wherever possible. This is the easy way to avoid overinterpretation, which seems to be what turns a scene from sympathetic to sentimental.

Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.

Haven't lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don't lose what you never had.

Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.