I was so very interested in literature and so relatively uninterested in the movies when I was a teenager.

I have very mixed feelings about the movie business, and about Los Angeles in general.

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.

A Good Soldier is one of my favorite novels, for various reasons. But the class question is a good one, because it's not always easy to empathize with privileged people.

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

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.

I grew up with such mixed feelings about LA, but I do love it. I grew up lectured by Woody Allen, for example, that LA was absurd, worthy of ridicule and contempt. Most people seem to describe Los Angeles as elementally despicable, or as someplace that requires an apology.