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As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.

Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?'

I see the role of the writer as creating a room with big windows and leaving the reader to imagine. It's a meeting on the page.

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

There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous.

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet.

It's a very dull thing to watch, a writer at work. So dull that whole casts of characters show up just to watch the boring writer writing.

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.