Remember, don't try to build the greatest wall that's ever been built. Focus on laying a single, expertly-placed brick. Then keep doing that, every day.

The value of a story isn't that it just has a narcotic effect. It's that it awakens something in you that makes you want to think, that makes you talk to other people, that stirs something that makes you examine the story that eventually turns into self-examination.

You play a part in every aspect of your life going the way you want or not going the way that you want. It has very little to do with other people.

You've got to run your career. What happens is a lot of times artists have this talent and they're just looking for somebody to take it and do something with it. And you have to be the creative force.

I consider myself an alchemist. An alchemist is basically a mystical chemist, right? And one of the great feats that alchemists used to do is they would take lead - just take a chunk of lead - and they could turn lead into gold.

Just because the kid's cute, doesn't mean you're not the father.

There's a certain delusional quality that all successful people have to have. You have to believe that something different than what has happened for the last 50 million years of history - you have to believe that something different can happen.