I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays.

As the industry has matured, real estate has become a very accepted investment. Institutions have used core investments to get comfortable with real estate as an asset class, and now that they're comfortable they're moving up the risk spectrum.

I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

In a given scene I may know nothing more than how it's supposed to end, most of the time not even that. Scenes are improvised. A character does or says something, and with as much spontaneity and schizophrenia as I can muster, another character responds. In this way, everything I write is spontaneous chain reaction and I'm running around playing leapfrog in my brain trying to "be" all my people.