If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable, rather than its literal narrative.

I give everything my best shot and sometimes it doesn't work out and other times it works out much better than you thought.

There's no way of telling why you want to do things beforehand. Something just grabs you. It might not grab you six months later, and it might not have grabbed you six months before, but at that particular moment it grabs you, so you jump on it.

It might be more difficult because you haven't got a book or a prop, but for the most part I like to write unpaid... initially and my own stories.

If you're growing up in times of peace and live in a country where there's plenty of food and good healthcare, you grow up without any relationship with death.

Having a phone call from Steven Spielberg was just a fantastic rite of passage. I loved it, and he was very focused, very likable, strictly business, and really sharp.

Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.