A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.

Stories are how we remember; we tend to forget lists and bullet points.

To connect to people at the deepest level, you need stories.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.