If you have value as an artist it's probably going to be in your capacity to let things inside you get past things that are placed there to keep you from telling the truth. The more you see things as clearly and coldly as you can, the more value you're going to have.

Who knows better than artists how much ugliness there is on the way to beauty, how many ghastly, mortifying missteps, how many days of granitic blockheadedness and dismaying ineptitude there is on the way to accomplishment, how partial all accomplishment is, how incomplete?

There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility.

My back went out and I gained 40 pounds while sweating over 'Perestroika.' It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I had to do before the screenplay to 'Lincoln.'

I won't deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward.

By converging people, process, and data, the benefits the Internet of Everything delivers to humanity are seemingly infinite. Imagine being able to track and understand, and then predict, long-term weather patterns. Farmers will be able to plant crops that have the greatest chance for success.

Facebook and Twitter are like a horrible digital plague.

I'm interested in businesses that take digital bits and turn them into interfaces for physical atoms. I'm also interested in drones, Bitcoin, and 3D printing.