Well, I stopped drinking. That was actually a big deal. I didn't go through any harrowing rock-bottom experience. I just made a decision to stop drinking.

I really like to travel when I write. Something about seeing new things and being in new cultures and environments provokes new thoughts in your head.

To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.

It's hard to explaining exactly what happened, but I felt in that moment that the divine, however we may choose to define such a thing, surely dwells as much in the concrete and taxi cabs as it does in the rivers, lakes, and mountains. Grace, I realized, is neither time nor place dependent. All we need is the right soundtrack.

There's something touching about a kid who's reading a book that's printed on actual paper. I think that anything that kids start reading, within reason, can lead to other discoveries.

It never made sense to me that someone would achieve any kind of success in show business, only to become a jerk.

And so, however many people watch this thing, that's how many different opinions there will be about it. But I don't feel like it has an agenda in terms of its ideology. It just presents a story like a mirror. It's a mirror more than it is than a distorted mirror.