A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

I love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

Fear is real, but so is love.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

People were saying that David Geffen and I had gotten married and it just blew me away. Not that they thought I was gay, but that they thought I could land a guy that hot.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

‚Harry Potter‘ gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Marriage is scary to me, man.

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

In New York I pretty much live in diners – I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.

Acting is happy agony.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.

I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen, because I pride myself on that.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

I don’t have time to be lonely. And I get fearful of relationships because I feel guilty about wanting someone to be completely faithful and loyal, when I can’t even give them 10 percent of the attention that they need. It’s just the reality of my time, my life, my schedule.

I’m doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don’t have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Yes, it is one of my ultimate aims – it is the ultimate sense of football: to make the people happy, to let them live some emotions that you usually can’t get.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I always have to be writing.

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.