I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.

The novelist is frequently considered to be an impediment.

You look at the absolute scorn that gets poured on a fallen celebrity, whether it's Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan or Marlon Brando, or Elvis when he got fat. They're not allowed the dignity of ordinary failure. And I think that plays into people's notions about Los Angeles, too. It's not allowed to be a regular city with problems.

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.

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.

It's hard to imagine there's a place for great writing inside a multinational conglomerate.

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