Jack Palance was my distant uncle - that's the family gossip. Growing up, my family knew everything about his face getting burned and scarred in the military and how that mutilation led him to become such a famous 'heavy' in films. I prayed for good scars of my own. Not just acne scars.

I don't do much more than organise other people's ideas and insights and thoughts, and sort of harvest them, and inventory them and present them.

I was born in 1962, and it seems that throughout my entire life the world has demanded peace but maintained conflict.

If you flee from the things you fear, there's no resolution.

I have seen this whole process of films releasing, becoming hits or flops, for too long now to expect things to do well. If I expect a film to do well, then it is for somebody else's sake, not for my own. I do my work, and if you feel that my work is improving from film to film, then I have done my part of the job.

It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.

Doing theater anywhere, especially in L.A., is a constant uphill battle, and there's also the unsexy parts of the business that you're faced with, like getting money. It's a really great thing to do. You feel like you're really an artist when you're doing that and you're in a company of artists.

I just want to be at the best place possible to ensure that I really kick on in my career, that I constantly have challenges, because in football, you don't have long. It's easy to become complacent when game time comes so easily, and you're doing so well.