I knew I wanted to be a writer. Where I came from, no one was a writer. I came from Long Island, and everyone became a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or a teacher or a businessman. I didn't know any writers.

TV and film are very different media with different requirements. In a TV show, you have actors and fellow writers and directors, who are interpreting your work. With a novel, you only have ink, words and your reader.

In a novel, the only budgetary limitations are that of your imagination.

When you do a TV show, the cumulative intimacy you develop with the audience through your characters is pretty profound. It may be the most profound storytelling there is, because the character gets to live and roll around in the audience's mind week after week.

I guess I've always been an aspiring novelist. I went to Princeton and wrote a novel for my thesis.

I feel like a centrist, an issue-specific person. I'm pretty conservative fiscally and pretty liberal on social issues.

I have a ways to go as a novelist. But what's great is, well, I frankly enjoyed the solitude. And I enjoyed being able to tell characters what to say and do without negotiating with an actor.