Everyone in the entertainment business gets crappy contracts when we start out, and into the middle of our careers. It's the nature of the business.

A lot of the futuristic space stuff seemed to me to be a very cool form of science-fiction, so that was my first real baptism in the genre.

I'm a big believer in the idea that while we are the sum of our tears, we are also the product of our choices in how we deal with those tears.

My philosophy: find what it is you want to say, walk in the room, say it, and get the hell out.

To have someone like Clint Eastwood come along and shoot your first draft as written is just any screenwriter's dream. And Clint is very straightforward. If it's good enough to get his attention, it's good enough to produce.

Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words - the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered.

Writing is the process of asking the next logical question.