The blank space can be humbling. But I've faced it my whole professional life. It's my job. It's also my calling. Bottom line: Filling this empty space constitutes my identity.

I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.

The last two - distractions and fears - are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible.

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them.

The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It's not about being against society anymore. It's about standing there, holding something up. It's not pulling away.

In creative endeavors luck is a skill.

I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.