Sometimes it seems to me that the celebration of a person is really just a prelude to ridicule.

I think writers can gain a lot of vitality from being misread.

Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the writers ever have power? Ever? They don't. Even in the book industry.

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.

I worked in the mail room at CAA when I was in high school. I worked in the literary department, too. That was my after school job, believe it or not: I would read manuscripts and then evaluations on whether or not I thought they'd make good movies. Which was fascinating and kind of hilarious to me at the time.

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

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.