Being cool is being your own self not doing something that someone else is telling you to do.

It's populated by people who by and large have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me it was just a great area for storytelling.

Anyone can write a story based on the kind of horror where you see a guy in car and then there's the bad guy in the back seat. It's infantile to rely on that for telling a story. That's like going to bed and thinking there's a monster under your bed. It's silly.

My boyfriend keeps telling me I've got to own things. So first I bought this car. And then he told me I oughta get a house. 'Why a house?' 'Well you gotta have a place to park the car.'

I mean I'm in the business of storytelling not message making.

My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility about beauty and how to make gumbo.

I'm always suspicious of really beautiful women telling us we shouldn't be worried about beauty.

Blanche talks about aging and why should she be considered poor because physical beauty is transitory and fading and she has such richness of the soul. I think that speech is so beautiful and so telling and so true.

After the first miscarriage I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

It was my father who instilled the 'never say no' attitude I carry around with me today and who instilled in me a sense of wonder always taking us on adventures in the car never telling us the destination.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth wisdom is dying out.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy an art in a lover an accomplishment in a bachelor and second-nature in a married man.

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

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I have a right to my anger and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be that it's not nice to be and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

My dad was a journalist. He was in Rwanda right after the genocide. In Berlin when the wall came down. He was always disappearing and coming back with amazing stories. So telling stories for a living made sense to me.

The amazing thing now is that most of those so-called critics who were telling me to find my own voice seem to have lost theirs.

My dream career would be to be in things that have real heart and are telling real stories but while doing that you're getting really big laughs. I don't necessarily love the straight crazy comedies. 'Caddyshack' is amazing but there's not a lot of new 'Caddyshack's.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me telling me their tales.

As an editor I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel 'The Lifeboat ' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night and I really wanted my company to publish it but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

Theatre when it is at its best takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing very vocal and very engaged and that makes theatre very exciting.

I mean there are some amazing storytelling being done on the small screen right now. That's what so cool about being in television right now. Studios networks are starting to throw more resources better writers more production values... and to be part of that is awesome.

The right really dominates radio and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.