I learn things late-and only the hard way.

All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.

Periodically I just notch up. And everyone among my colleagues thinks that Perfidia - in its accessibility, its big throbbing heart - will be the biggest notch up yet. We'll see what happens. It's on my ass.

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book.

I was in L.A. in '08. It was a cold Saturday night. I had spread my phone number out to a score of women and was just indulging this sweet, sad, elegiac, bale loneliness - don't tell me you haven't been there.