I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects - digitize and dematerialize - we approach a 'Star Trek' future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles.

What stars do in their off-hours is a never-ending source of diddling curiosity to the tabloid sensibility.

The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot. Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn't until he went on David Susskind's show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure. Norman Mailer and Vidal, the same thing. The bestselling writers now, there's no great animal energy with them.

Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.