If you're writing a book that takes place in New York in the moment, you can't not write about 9-11; you can't not integrate it. My main character's view is the Statue of Liberty and the Trade Center. It doesn't have to take over, but it has to be acknowledged.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

I can never read this book, just like I can never see a movie that I wrote a screenplay for. I can read it and see it physically, but I can't accurately judge it. I'm too close to it. If I read it ten times I'll have ten different reactions.

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.