I was blessed to grow up in really interesting times and to go back to a home where I was very safe.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now.

He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.

The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect. And he was right. But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I think, worthy of our awe and our loyalty.

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.