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

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

I like writing sentences. It's tactile and exciting. Whereas working at the level of the scene is a more cerebral pleasure.

Good fiction necessarily encompasses our limited understandings of one another, and of ourselves.

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

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.

Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!