Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.
What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.
The real challenge is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It’s to survive as yourself, undiminished.
I've come to believe that everything worth achieving is beyond one's capacity - or seems so at first. The thing is to persist, not back off, fight your fight, pay your dues, and carry on. Effort is all; continue and you may get there despite everything.
Look for the contradictions in every character, especially in your heroes and villains. No one should be what they first seem to be. Surprise the audience.
Wonder is our need today, not information.
Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed.
Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. Do not talk to him about the interests and rights of the human race; that little private business of his for the moment absorbs all his thoughts, and he hopes that public disturbances can be put off to some other time.
That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness.
Around us, life bursts with miracles--a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.
It is a horrible demoralizing thing to be a lawyer. You look for such low motives in everyone and everything.