What interests me is whatever it is that allows the heart to continue to yearn for something the intelligence knows is impossible to have: a lost love, a shelter from life's blows, the return of a time past, even a connection to the dead.

Memory is not pure. Memories told are not pure memories; memories told are stories. The storyteller will change them. I've always been interested in that.

In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.

I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I'm trying to define because it's somehow fascinating to me in itself. It's more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work.

I do not mourn the death of the printed letter in a snobby, East Coast, patrician way - 'Where have our manners gone?' - but because I love objects, I love paper, and I love something that I can hold to my chest for a moment. Still, I bear no grudge against the e-mail form itself.

When you're watching a Bond movie, if there's a violent death, there's something about cleverly chosen twists, or what props are used, or some way that he's doing something that feels like an ironic twist, that feels like it gives the audience permission to enjoy watching it and to enjoy watching something that's otherwise just brutality.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn't come out right, you've got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I was personally opposed to the death penalty, and yet I think I have probably asked for the death penalty more than most people in the United States.