You need to be happy with who you are and, whoever that is, let your little light shine.
My mom was a screenwriter. I saw a lot of people who didn't seem very fulfilled creatively or otherwise by their roles in the motion picture industry.
We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.
There's a kind of perverseness or betrayal in that idea that art is somehow superior to life. Or that it's more important to write well than it is to take out the garbage.
I thought, writing is everything, it's so much more important than this or that. If only I could give that young man a stern talking to. Having a child changes things quite a bit.
I think writers can gain a lot of vitality from being misread.
Hollywood is famous for breeding monsters, and having worked in the business, I've known a lot of them. But only intermittently have I ever found them monstrous. They have many other qualities.
I'm drawn to people who look different. I'm not exploiting. I'm not making fun of them. I'm drawn to them.
I don't know video games. The last video game I played, apart from Dance Dance Revolution at Jeremy's house, which I was very good at - Scarlett [Johansson] and I will always have "Billie Jean" - was Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. I'm from the Dark Ages.
Since I don't have access to the White House pastry chef anymore, it's done wonders for my figure.
People I admire have two qualities: a kind of simplicity, and generosity of spirit. It seems to me that the more impressive people are in what they have done, the simpler they tend to be in how they talk to you, or in what they say or write.