I see a lot of marriages crash and burn around me and my wife. I've always been curious about how hard it is to love well and be loved.

I truly believe the art's larger than the artist. Who cares about John Steinbeck? I care about the Joad family.

I've had a lot of glamour come my way in the last 10 years - you know, movie stars and mansions and red carpets and trips to Europe and crazy stuff I never would have imagined - and I look at them as if I'm the bartender in the corner of the room. They've never gone into my psyche. I look at them with distance, and wonder.

Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.

I work out four days a week in the off-season, and in the warm, running weather months, I do five days. A push/pull regime of weightlifting, cycling, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday run with my oldest son, even if it's cold out.

I think the writer's job is to paint the gray because no life is clearly defined.

Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.