You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
If you're going to make an emotional connection with somebody, whether it's in the story or in the world, there's a certain amount of self-acceptance that is required.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.
I think it is time for a new pride in the intellectual life, and a new impatience with people who take pride in ignorance, or somehow use "elite" to mean "person who has taken the time to know" and then are eager to dismiss, say, striving, or the notion that improving one's self out of difficult conditions is a noble thing.
The thing I've discovered that is a help is that there isn't a simple virtue or a simple vice. They're always connected. If you have Tendency A, that you loathe, you can almost be sure that Tendency B, which you love, is somehow connected to it.
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded. . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Many beautiful women have been made happy by their own beauty, but no intelligent woman has ever been made happy by her own intelligence.
Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.
If a North Korean ballistic missile can reach Alaska, it can reach Vladivostok.
The era of playing aggressive cricket and to have the mid-on up is gone. You now try to read the mindset of a batsman.