Jonathan Tropper

I'm at my desk before nine, and I go all day. I'm not necessarily productive all day, but really, who is?

I have a handful of leather jackets, and I love them all. I think most men my age do, and it can be traced back to the Fonz and Danny Zuko.

Nobody wants to rock their own life. But, on the other hand, when your life does get rocked, it affords you a certain level of emotional honesty. It liberates you to be who you really are.

I occasionally experience the discomfort of people assuming my work is autobiographical.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

Banshee' was kind of a lark. I was getting paid pretty well to write movies no one was making - and so I decided to try my hand at TV and get paid much less to actually get something produced.

Adapting your own book is like performing open-heart surgery on your own child.

You never have to change a book for budget.

I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.

Ultimately, you have to write what's coming at any given point in time. Fighting your instincts for practical reasons is a losing battle.

Whether I'm writing a novel about a guy mourning the death of his father or whether I'm writing a show about people killing each other, you want to hear characters speak and be funny and witty.