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Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

I really just love to open a blank document and spew, whereas with a screenplay I have to be more judicious.

If you're writing a novel, you can afford to see where the spirit takes you, but in terms of structure and engineering with a screenplay, you have to be quite pragmatic; otherwise, it will run away from you.

In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn't be writing screenplays. I'd be writing novels.