Washington is a city of locker-room boys, and all the old, outmoded notions apply: men and women are ushered to separate rooms after dinner, sex is dirty, and they are still serving onion-soup dip.

I definitely divide my life into decades. Almost every ten years, something in my work life has changed. My twenties were my journalistic phase, then there was my screenwriting phase, then I became a director, then I started doing some plays.

I look as young as a person can look given how old I am.

That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.

Plastic surgery is one of the ways that people deal with the aging process. And I don't mean by using it as a form of denial, but as a kind of negotiation with it.

Too few journalists become screenwriters. I say to all the would-be screenwriters: Become journalists. And I’ll say to working journalists: Do not stay journalists. Become screenwriters.

Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.