I was a huge fantasy geek growing up. I was the dungeon master in my D&D game.

For every Book of Job, there's a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?

Iwan Rheon is a great actor, and he's going to go on to a long brilliant career. And most of the characters he'll play will not be evil. He's not one of those who can only play a bad guy.

And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.

No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.

I have a preference for writing that deals with domestic issues; even in visual art, I like work that focuses on very small aspects of human life. I like movies that have a very narrow focus. I can see how it might be viewed as limiting, but I don't experience it that way.

When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.