"It is not about surpassing the masters who preceded us but more about opening new artistic vistas. It is about doing the things they didn't have a chance or the time to do."

“There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity of expression, I don't.”

“Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.”

“When I was 15, a cabdriver asked me if I was Paul McCartney's daughter,”

“I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.”

Source : Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. November 9, 2010.

“We learn to love our sweat, we discover our passion to move and connect it to effort, we discover both the animal in us and the power of our imagination”

“Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.”

Source : Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

“High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.”

“Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.”