She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.

It's because you're always fighting sentiment. You're fighting sentimentality all of the time because being a mother alerts you in such a primal way.

I feel I'm moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

Eventually everyone has to hit the dark side of life - Someone doesn't like you, someone doesn't like your work, someone doesn't love you back... people die. What we have is a generation who are super-confident and super-positive about things, but when the least bit of darkness enters their lives, they're paralyzed.

I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me.

Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.