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

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

I think the publishing industry is dismayingly like the movie business. It grows more corporate by the day.

My mom was a screenwriter. I saw a lot of people who didn't seem very fulfilled creatively or otherwise by their roles in the motion picture industry.

There was a moment when the Berlin Wall came down and some people felt, "Oh capitalism won. That's the ideology we can believe in now."

I've always found too that somewhere in whatever you've just written lies the seed of what you're going to write next.

The novelist is frequently considered to be an impediment.