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.

The novelist is frequently considered to be an impediment.

I've always felt that the basic unit of writing fiction is the sentence, and the basic unit of the screenplay is the scene.

I don't feel like I'm self-conscious about what's next. I don't care. I know what it's like to be ignored, and I know what it's like not to be.

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.

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

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