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

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

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

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.

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

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.