When I moved to SF in my early 20s, I loved it, but I was absolutely astonished to discover that people there hated L.A. I was just like why? Really? I had no idea.

Sacrificing one's life on the altar of literature is in some ways like sacrificing a goat to some malicious spirit. It's not always a humane or necessary decision.

Hollywood is famous for breeding monsters, and having worked in the business, I've known a lot of them. But only intermittently have I ever found them monstrous. They have many other qualities.

Much to my surprise, there's a sense for people in the cable industry that fiction writers might actually be good at script writing. You can write dialogue!

It's hard enough to make a novel a novel. I wouldn't know how to make it something else at the same time

I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.

These are the kind of movies that only a real apparatchik, someone who thinks that corporations are people, could love.

During the 90s, I watched a lot of people getting fat and prosperous, and I thought, culture itself is the casualty of this.

There was a moment when the Berlin Wall came down and some people felt, "Oh capitalism won. That's the ideology we can believe in now."

It's hard to imagine there's a place for great writing inside a multinational conglomerate.

Everybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the writers ever have power? Ever? They don't. Even in the book industry.

You need to accept your yesterday, so u can be happy on your today, risk and failures will always be there, and so is success.

Life is too short to do the things you don't love doing.

What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.

From antiquity, people have recognized the connection between naming and power.

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.

It becomes necessary to learn how to clear the mind of all clouds, to free it of all useless ballast and debris by dismissing the burden of too much concern with material things.

I think the leading cause of financial disablement is the belief that you can rely on the experts to help you. Investing requires an intense personal involvement.

Work hard, be yourself, and have fun!

The Billy Carter of the British monarchy.