Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.

When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again.

I get and read an enormous number of first novels.

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

Movies have to handle time very efficiently. They're about stringing scenes together in the present. Novels aren't necessarily about that.