If I have to write on an airplane or get up early to write or write late, you just gotta sit down. When you have the time, you have to be able to do it.

There's only one note you ever get in broadcast and that's clarity.

A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination, the words are turning into pictures in your mind, there's an active relationship that's going on.

My feeling has always been if you entertain people, they give you permission to do more on a thematic or character level.

In a book you can really talk about ideas and themes and characters in a deeper way than you can even on the screen.

A two-hour movie tends to be a plot-delivery device; you tend to have to introduce all the characters, say what the goal is, and then get there with a setback, but that's not really how life is or what a story necessarily wants to be.

It's amazing how flexible the human mind is in terms of jumping into a backstory or an aside. Vonnegut is a great example - it's not a linear story by any means, but somehow your brain is keeping it moving in one direction even though the story is taking you in all these different directions.