You humiliate a rich person and they're still rich. You humiliate a brilliant person and they're still smart. A person who is well connected is still the king of England. But if you humiliate a young person, you take away the only form of power they have.

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

The strength of film is its accessibility and immediacy. But the strength of books is that freedom to really depict anything you want because people are going to be reading it in private. So, I'm always trying to write with the immediacy and the constant motion of film but I'm also trying to write with the complete freedom of subject matter that books have.

Ideas come at any moment -- except when you demand them. Most ideas come while I'm physically active, at the gym, with friends, gardening, so I always carry pen and paper. My first draft is always written in longhand. But once the first dozen chapters, more like short stories, are written, then momentum builds until I can't leave the project until it's done.

Everybody's still miserable in the same way they've always been miserable, and more and more of my friends - especially my male friends - find themselves taking anti-anxiety, psychotropic drugs. It seems like everybody I know is wondering if they're really who they are, or once the prescription runs out, will they become someone different?

Language is what books do very well and movement is what movies does very well.

What I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and put a burning wedding invitation to it, and boom, I'm recycling.