It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel.

I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

Matthew Wiener on Mad Men writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.

When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If you write just one scene where the audience is confused or it breaks their concentration in some way, then you've lost them, and you might never get them back.

The West sees Iran as an important force in the gulf.