Come to think of it, Pasadena's as good a place to die as any.

Come to think of it, Pasadena's as good a place to die as any.

I've yet to meet a writer who could change water into wine, and we have a tendency to treat them like that.

I went to Spago once, eight years ago. I had just closed a deal. I thought it would be fun to go to Spago and it wasn't. I got a bad table and nobody paid any attention to me.

It's impossible not to be taken in by the spectacle of oneself, which is the biggest sin of the culture right now.

On one level, nothing's really changed in my life. I still drive my daughter in the car pool on Monday. But it's impossible not to be aware of this rush of attention; it's impossible not to be seduced by it once you've entered into it, seduced by being unhappy when the attention wanes.

One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

I'm a sneaker head. You'll find more sneakers than heels in my closet.

If you look around, there are very few really super quarterbacks. There are just very few. If you're lucky enough to have one, lucky enough that one of these Andrew Lucks is available when you have the top pick, then that's just a matter of luck. You can't attribute that to anything else.

Janet Jackson is an icon, I've been honored to meet her a few times, working with her would be amazing.

The thing that would most improve my life is 27 hours in a day. I could meet all my deadlines.

I want to grow into the best person I can be.

While I live a busy life, the pace ebbs and flows.

I've been working pretty solidly for a long time: Not that anyone would notice, you know what I mean? It's been my goal to work as much as possible, and be as unknown as possible.

Anger is an expensive luxury in which only men of certain income can indulge.

I do a lot of urban fantasy, which is modern-day cities, but you've got magic, you've got fairies running around, or cryptozoological creatures running around, and I'm pulling very heavily on my background as a folklore major and having done some animation work and all of that, and I'm pulling from the modern fairy tale narrative.

Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor. The thing that really fascinated me is that through this tragedy there was this amazing American heroism.

Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks.

National Standards was not a narrative of past events but was leftwing revisionism and Political Correctness.

I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I'd have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life's way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.

When I leave a room, it's gonna be footprints of funk wherever I stepped, because I'm a soul-funk crusader.

Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.

The musical based on my life would most likely be called 'Something Fabulous.' 'Something Fabulous' - that's a great title!

Every employee not just the senior people should know how a company is doing.

There are going to be games where you don't have the greatest conditions, so to show that you can do it in bad conditions is a plus.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey one of those journeys which seem to divide ones life in two by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.

Every story was being made up. My true friends weren't the ones speaking. It was people who never knew me, making up stories. Even my local paper put a $1,000 bounty out for information about my whereabouts.

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.