When I moved to SF in my early 20s, I loved it, but I was absolutely astonished to discover that people there hated L.A. I was just like why? Really? I had no idea.

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

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

My own sense is that fiction is inching its way over to join poetry on the cultural margin. It's an area of passionate concern for me, as for many people, but it's nowhere near as central to the culture as it used to be.

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

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

These are the kind of movies that only a real apparatchik, someone who thinks that corporations are people, could love.