I always wanted to strip. I'm sort of one of those people who would walk past a strip club and while everybody else might give it a passing glance or cracks a joke, I'd be like pressing my face up against the window trying to see in. I was very curious always.

I absolutely relate to being alone in squalor, trying to come up with something adequate. I relate to that, and I've been known to crawl out of bed and drink out of a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.

When I was a kid, I attended a small Catholic school in a south suburb of Chicago.

Stripping toughened my hide, but exposing myself as a writer has been a lot more brutal.

I grew up in the Midwest; you don't know any screenwriters. It didn't seem like a realistic career possibility.

The attitude toward women in this industry is nauseating. There are all sorts of porcine executives who are uncomfortable with a woman doing anything subversive. They want the movie about the beautiful girl who trips and falls, the adorable klutz.

Los Angeles is often described as the nadir of vapidity, a smog-choked space cradle.