"What's cool is when you're able to give your audience imagination and you don't have to cage them in like animals."

"When people ask me about my story, I just go through the positive stuff: the tent-pole moments, the big landmark checkpoints."

"The best movies are simple."

"My mom is the backbone not just of my family but of many families."

"Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another."

"True wealth is not measured in gold, but in the belief that the roots of true happiness grow deep in the present moment."

"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."

"Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired."