Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

If there is an abiding theme in 'The Pursuit of Happiness,' it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories.

There is much to be said for solitude.

We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.

But what we can never do is change the story that has made us what we are. It's a story completely dictated by the accumulation of life's manifold complexities—its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what has happened to us.

The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.