I think having power ingrains people with a conservatism. There's a tendency to hedge one's bets. (Which explains a lot, actually, about why the movie business is the way it is, and why the publishing industry is too.)

Jay-Z isn't actually any better than James Joyce even though more people understand him. I'm more interested in what's meaningful within the lives of individuals. And fiction will always be central to the lives of certain people, which is all that matters.

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

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

The 90s were the decade in which studio filmmaking became a much more purely corporatized process, when their crassness ceased to operate on such a relatively individual scale.

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

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