I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Playing basketball all my life, I’ve collected a lot of different basketball shoes. It’s pretty much all I wear.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

But I think we’re also just talking about the literacy of the audience. The visual literacy of the audience. They’ve seen so many images now, especially here in the States. There’s so much to look at, to watch. So the visual storytelling literacy is harder to impress.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

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.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

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

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

For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

I don’t do research. I never have.

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.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar – hide in the back and just play.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

I’d like to think that I’m a calm and sweet person. I tend to be very playful at home with my children, but in life… we have to fight our battles – our work battles, our political battles, our personal battles – and we’re focused.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

I teach children to be winners.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.