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.

Our need to identify with representative figures is something that never goes away. We still find those in novels. We find those in television. We find them in movies. We find them all over the place.

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

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

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

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