"In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications."

"A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'"

"I write plays and movies, I live and work at the borderline between word and image just as any cartoonist or illustrator does. I'm not a pure writer. I use words as the score for kinetic imagistic representations."

"I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities."

"There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth."

"If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend."

"It is a humble truth that the test of character in leadership is how one behaves in moments of unvarnished power."

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."