Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!

Serious films for grown-ups - 'Michael Clayton,' 'In the Valley of Elah,' 'A Mighty Heart' - these are big Hollywood films, but they have substance and craft and really beautiful performances.

Treasure the moments, her heart whispered. If you don't learn to treasure the moments, you'll never be able to treasure the memories.

Workaholics aren't heroes. They don't save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is home because she figured out a faster way

If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.

It is a sober truth that people who live only to amuse themselves work harder at the task than most people do in earning their daily bread.

Technocracy wants to do everything by machinery. Machinery is doing just fine. If it can't kill you, it will put you out of work.

If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

If you go to bed at 10:00 and get up by 6:00 A.M., things will work out for you.

Summer is a discouraging time to work - you don't feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.

It would be great to have a little getaway place somewhere hot, maybe down in Mexico, since I love it there. But now that I've banned myself from the sun, I don't know how that will work.

My life isn't focused on results. My life is really focused on the process of doing all the things I'm doing, from work to relationships to friendships to charitable work.