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

One of the weird things about L.A. is that there's always a set of negative perceptions that attaches itself to this city.

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.

A lot of talent, a lot of the currency that movies used to have, has spilled over into TV. People talk about TV the way they used to talk about movies and, as much as I hate to say it, the way they used to talk about books.

I thought, writing is everything, it's so much more important than this or that. If only I could give that young man a stern talking to. Having a child changes things quite a bit.

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

People will continue to make movies. But I do think the economic model of the studio movie is closing in on a kind of systemic collapse.