I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed. Beyond the meaning (of a work of art), it is important to people. Without it, lives can be dull.

The cliché I tried to avoid was I hated "teenage sidekicks." I always figured if I were a superhero, there's no way on God's earth that I'm gonna pal around with some teenager. So my publisher insisted I have a teenager in the series, because they always felt teenagers won't read the books unless there's a teenager in the story; which is nonsense.

I'm very proud of being a hack. It's why I've lived as long as I have, I think.

If you're going to write something, that's going to be read by people, a lot of people, you hope it will not only entertain them but maybe do them some good in some way.

Once you get the script, you then hope you can get the director that you want. Then you hope he can get the cast he wants. Again, you can go quickly or there can be a million stumbling blocks. There's just no way to know.

I want to get that same feeling that everybody logging on to our website is sharing a little bit of an inside joke, and the rest of the world is oblivious to it although I want to have most of the world.

Everybody learns differently and everybody gets to a certain point from a different direction.