By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world.

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.

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

Everyone I know who is successful has issues with their father, regardless of whether it was sports or business or entertainment.

At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he'd been a mime, odds are he'd already be dead.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

Writing fiction is an act of imagination and fantasizing, and it's not relating in prose what you've been doing for the last two or three years.