The goal of storytelling should be to make stories as ubiquitous as music.

Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.

I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories... If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

Now I basically just read spy stories because they're about solving a puzzle within the constraints of history. It's the tick tock, the clockwork that I'm interested in.

Whenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.

As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.