The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

Rational discussion is useful only when there is a significant base of shared assumptions.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head – chemo-brain they call it. It’s awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.

This was life in the ’30s. This is the way it was with children in the South. I tried to make it general, the kind of things that might happen to any child.

Using e-mail, I can communicate with scientists all over the world.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

I want the reader to feel something is astonishing – not the ‚what happens‘ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

I like being a writer.

One of my direct subordinates, one of my guys that worked for me, he would call me up or pull me aside with some major problem, some issue that was going on. And he’d say, ‚Boss, we’ve got this, and that, and the other thing.‘ And I’d look at him and I’d say, ‚Good.‘

You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it’s always just one person encountering the book, it’s not an audience, it’s one to one.

All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.

I am an introvert; privately I am very shy, and I don’t speak unless I have to.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.