You can get stuff done in New York that you can't in Los Angeles. If you wanted to get some milk and get your shoes repaired and drop something off at the dry cleaner, that's an all-day adventure in Los Angeles. In New York, you can bang that out in half an hour.

Acting is a job of permission. Someone has to give you permission to do it. But I have started to be like, 'I only want to do things that I want to do,' and writing has afforded me the luxury.

I read a lot for me. But I'm not one of those people who gets 'The New York Times' book review and runs out and buys 10 books and is done with them and passing them out to friends, you know, two weeks later.

If you chase fame, you make bad choices. Being famous isn't interesting.

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Would most politicians have gone to a meeting with someone advertised as being an agent of the Russian government?

Apple is to the United States government what Clarence Thomas was to the civil rights coalition. How dare you get this big sidestepping us.