I always talk to young writers about when you make art in your room, you make art. And when you send it to New York and L.A., you have to be a professional. Of course, when you sell your book rights as an option for a movie, you have to be a professional about that.

I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it.

When I travel round the country, people can't place my accent; if there's someone in the audience, they'll be like, 'You're from Philadelphia', but everyone else will say, 'Where are you from, California?' I get England sometimes - bizarre!

The important thing for me as an artist is to keep going back to the page and doing what I do.

My mother was a doctor, and I grew up with her in a little apartment belonging to my grandmother, because the Soviet Union never saw fit to let our family have its own apartment.

People get a little bolder and more wild in summer. You've got things going on kabobs, things cooking on the bone. There's something about standing over a grill or outside with the family that inspires us.

I have seen in many cases that the youngsters are told by their friends and family that they sing very well, but that might not be true. When they are told that they have to work hard on their singing, they get disheartened. One must know how to take feedback from different people and work hard on his or her singing to achieve something.

My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.