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I wrote a few unsuccessful screenplays before I wrote 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.' I wrote them as television plays that never got made. I'm glad I wrote them - I think it was a good experience.

That's also why comedy and horror are my two favorite genres of film to write, because you get these outbursts of emotion from people, laughter and shock, and it's really thrilling, and I like to be thrilled.

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.

I do tend to feel more connected to dead writers, perhaps because they have finished their work.

'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.

'Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere' took me six years to write.

Being a screenwriter is not enough for a full creative life.

Certainly I had a really terrible time with 'Emotionally Weird.' When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't write any more.'

I had grown up loving movies and had always wanted to write them.

What I really like to do is write 'genre' stories without a cartoonish element. I did the same with 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and I'll do the same with 'Man of Steel.'