Even though I think writers can sometimes thrive from being misread. It can give them something to push off of.

I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.

I think having power ingrains people with a conservatism. There's a tendency to hedge one's bets. (Which explains a lot, actually, about why the movie business is the way it is, and why the publishing industry is too.)

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

I'm going to write what I feel like writing, which is a great place to be. But it can be hard to get there. It's so easy to get stricken with one kind of self-consciousness or another.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

A lot of talent, a lot of the currency that movies used to have, has spilled over into TV. People talk about TV the way they used to talk about movies and, as much as I hate to say it, the way they used to talk about books.