“No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.”

“We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad.”

“Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.”

“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.”

“We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.”

“Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.”

“What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.”