People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.

To his surprise he also discovered that it was possible to be good at what you had little interest in, just as it had been possible to be bad at something, whether painting or poetry, that you cared about a great deal.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.

Sleep is over-rated. Have you ever noticed how it's always recommended to people anybody with half a brain can see need to wake up?