It wouldn't kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.

And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe.

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.

Humans know when it's not a good story. Unless you do this for a living, you may not know exactly why you don't like a story, but you can't fool an audience ever. They know when you have it and they know when you don't.

That's a very real feeling - that I don't have a story to tell. I'm not a pure storyteller. I have a tough time with story.

Perhaps something like Facebook couldn't have been invented by somebody who goes out five nights a week and has a ton of friends and makes friends really easily.