I grew up with such mixed feelings about LA, but I do love it. I grew up lectured by Woody Allen, for example, that LA was absurd, worthy of ridicule and contempt. Most people seem to describe Los Angeles as elementally despicable, or as someplace that requires an apology.

My own sense is that fiction is inching its way over to join poetry on the cultural margin. It's an area of passionate concern for me, as for many people, but it's nowhere near as central to the culture as it used to be.

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

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.

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.

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

Great books are written from a sense that there is nothing to lose.