I think writers can gain a lot of vitality from being misread.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

I do have complicated feelings about Hollywood, but I also have tremendously affectionate ones.

I've always felt that the basic unit of writing fiction is the sentence, and the basic unit of the screenplay is the scene.

We're a culture that's obsessed with people who make and who squander ridiculous amounts of wealth, which seemed an obsession well worth interrogating in a novel. That probably accounts for what some have called the book's "sweeping" feel, but I don't know that I set out to be cinematic. I wouldn't know how to do that in a novel, specifically.

I think it's what fiction is for: to illuminate that gap between our secret selves and our more visible and apparent ones.

Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!