Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I’ll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters.

From the essay "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again" 1. Journalists sometimes make things up. 2. Journalists sometimes get things wrong. 3. Almost all books that are published as memoirs were initially written as novels, and then the agent/editor said, This might work better as a memoir. 6. Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.

When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

One of the best things about directing movies, as opposed to merely writing them, is that there's no confusion about who's to blame: You are.

New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. Sex is always out there. Friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.

Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it.