Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."

Endings are never neat, because when life goes on, there is no end. You may want to speculate about what the characters get up to afterwards, but I feel it would be presumptuous of me to dictate that.

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

I suppose the short chapters and differing narrative points of view are quite "cinematic" devices, which came very naturally to me.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.