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The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.

I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life.

I'm not the most famous guy in the world; my work is spread out across different mediums, and I never write the same kind of story and rarely even do the same character from one year to the next.

Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories.

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

If I think about the writers I love or might be influenced by, I can't write at all, so I pretend there aren't any.