Ninety percent of what we create is not our best work.

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate--the ritual often exhausts them.

A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.

Of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.

Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.

Politics is the name we give to the orchestration of power in any society.

All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.