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.

It's really a lovely feeling to write knowing that failure is taken off the table because if it's bad you just never show it to anyone.

As we go through life our relationship with our own mortality and our inevitable demise increases.

I'm always pre-occupied with what it is that I'm doing at the moment.

Generally, I read nonfiction. Theres very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.

You're working with other people and sometimes it doesn't work out the way you want, and sometimes you didn't realise what a mistake you've made until you see it projected.

There are so many other people involved in the making of a play or a television series or whatever... even if you're a novelist there's so much in just the marketing of a book, or even the time... the zeitgeist, the moment at which it comes out. There's a lot you can't control.