The great secret to success is that there are no secrets of success. There are only timeless principles that have proven effective throughout the centuries.
I've done my job and I've got the picture out there, and I'm very happy with it.
I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.
Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
A lot of people said, Who do you think you are? I told them I know exactly who I am and I'll tell you exactly where I'm going.
Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.
Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy,"Easy" doesn't enter into grown-up life.
When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.
My god, people are selling their work and people are reading it! The horror! That MFA programs have to advertise that they'll let you write YA or fantasy or what-have-you is just absurd, but we do, because the presumption is that they're closed to that sort of thing. You're offering an MFA in creative writing? Teach people how to write well, worry about that part, let the writers come up with the stories.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.
Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged.