You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

If happiness is what you’re after, then you are going to be let down frequently and be unhappy much of your time. Joy, though, is something else. It’s not a choice, not a response to some result, it is a constant. Joy is “the feeling we have from doing what we are fashioned to do,” no matter the outcome.

I tell myself I bear witness. The real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.

I don't know how to work a room. It's a real skill.

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

Directors like William Friedkin (Killer Joe), Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike) and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) got in touch with me and wanted me to be part of their films. That was a whole new chapter for me. I didn’t chase any of those films and it made me think that I was right to take a chance, say no to the kind of thing I had grown tired of doing, and wait until something good came around. And it did.

I work through life with commas. I don't even know, do you have parentheticals?