New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.

Money is a kind of poetry.

It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

I don't go around thinking about regret; regret doesn't consume me as a person... I'm not certain about whether any writer, any artist, any musician, can write without regret, so I don't think perhaps it's even particularly Southern.

The Creative Habit' is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. 'The Collaborative Habit' is obviously about surviving with other people.

I'd like to widen my education. I'd definitely like to widen my film range. I mean, I'd love to do some theater.