Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or necessary decision.

The '90s were a time when not just the movie business, but every aspect of American life, became a lot more corporate. There's a line in Jonathan Franzen's essay "Perchance to Dream" about how "the rich lateral dramas of local manners have been replaced by a single vertical drama, that of commercial generality." I wanted to examine that great homogenizing force that came in during the '90s, since Hollywood seemed a place where it was particularly active.

I think the publishing industry is dismayingly like the movie business. It grows more corporate by the day.

I don't want to say that having power is overrated, but powerlessness can give rise to a different kind of authority, and that's the kind of authority that writes books.

Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose.

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

Usually when people say they have mixed feelings about something, it's a sort of euphemistic way of saying they hate it.