The history of screenwriting - of what we do - is more than 100 years old. It's thousands of years old, going back to Sophocles and Euripedes. I believe the only - the only - separation for being a dramatist is reading drama.
I think certain people like to torture me because they think I've had it easier than I actually have and they think: 'Oh, she's got this, she's got that, she's always had everything perfect,' and it's sooo not true.
Women born and raised on this fragile planet have more uniting us than dividing us - and it's the job of feminists to help us realise that.
Empirical evidence collected and analyzed by political scientists demonstrates that judicial pensions are the most important factor in a Justice's decision to retire, far more important than the party of the President or which political party has control of the Senate.
The government should not pick up every single bit of healthcare to where literally 60 percent of every dollar is just in your last 60 days of life. We should be more balanced than that and give people a chance to understand what the government should and should not pay for.
There was a big difference between Ron Paul and me when it came to the 'no.' His 'no' was philosophical. It was reasoned. It was right. My 'no' actually put a stop to legislation. It cut spending. Mine carried further than just no.
The people are more important than the food. We want a person to be as successful as he can be, and it works the other way around, too.
I want to take some jams and really concentrate on hooking up with Page because, since he's the only one not next to me, and his sound is mainly coming from my monitor rather than through the air, it's a little harder for me to hook up with him.
I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too?
If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.
I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.
I tend to write about dark things that happen in a very domestic setting 'cause that, to me, is much scarier than the unknown.
President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election.
When you try to do something bigger and more grandiose, a lot of times it's more apt to fall apart. It's a lot easier to lay down a bunch of singles than it is to get a home run.
I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.
Today in America we are no more 'post-racial' than we are 'post-partisan.' We have a long way to go.
I've been trekking the hills and lanes of the British countryside for nearly four decades now and I've come to associate my passion with overexcited poets rather than pampered painters.
I think of myself more as a filmmaker or as a film person than as strictly just a writer. I don't come out of playwriting or anything like that.
I'm over being a pop star. I don't wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I've accomplished a lot. I feel like I'm highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.
I can no more separate my serious concerns about the world from my cockeyed way of seeing it than I can keep apart my personal and professional selves.
I'd rather dig a ditch than go to a dinner party with people I don't know.
I think my service is better than my food... I focus so much on the service.
It was better to be known as the kid who could draw than as the short kid.
Neal Stephenson handles exposition better than anybody else. I keep trying to learn his tricks, but every time I duck into his pages, I get lost in the stories all over again and forget that I'm a writer.
There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.
When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings.
I want my son to never know the mommy who would rather watch him play basketball than play with him.
And all the good you've done will soon be swept away, You've begun to matter more than the things you say.
Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it.
I know and do what is right better than many big men who read.
Sculpture will last a lot longer than painting.
One of my frustrations is that we in society generally have this bifurcation in how we see the world. That's probably a little less true with business audiences, but in general, there tends to be this view that for-profit companies are greedy, and nonprofits are noble. It's absolutely more complicated than that.
Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in tech support in those giant cubicle farms you see. I was surrounded by people who played video games all the time - sometimes actually in the call centers, playing online multiplayer games. I saw friends of mine who began to feel that going online was more compelling to them than real life.
Quite frankly, the financial community has to improve its image. The financial community has to be much more transparent than it is.
Movies are more than a commodity. Movies are to our civilization what dreams and ideals are to individual lives: They express the mystery and help define the nature of who we are and what we are becoming.
I've always loved the future. But I must say the future changes a lot quicker than it used to. An era used to last thirty or forty years - now we're lucky if it's five.
