“I finally learned that it was all right to say something wasn’t working for me when it wasn’t working. The world doesn’t come crashing down when you speak the truth.”

“That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.”

“After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”

““Marina,” I said, “I don’t know how to explain this, but … well, everything I say or do or even think just doesn’t seem to work out for me. Except when I’m totally alone.” I almost added, “Totally alone with God,” but I didn’t because I knew how crazyloco this might sound, especially since I wasn’t a priest or a monk.”

“Even when I was a struggling actor, I was writing scripts, which were terrible, but I was fueled by a belief that I had to create the door. The right door wasn’t always going to open for me. Sometimes I was going to have to just crash through it or build one where there was no door before.”

“I wasn’t gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.”

“Even then he had those piercing cat's eyes of his and when he had said something, finished up by saying: "If I'm wrong, put me right." And so I began to understand that you didn't speak for the sake of speaking, to say that you had done this or that, what you had eaten or drunk, but to work out an idea, to find out what makes the world go round.”

“It wasn’t fair, but fairness was something you had to go get; it wasn’t delivered like the mail.”

“It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.”

“He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.”