You can get stuff done in New York that you can't in Los Angeles. If you wanted to get some milk and get your shoes repaired and drop something off at the dry cleaner, that's an all-day adventure in Los Angeles. In New York, you can bang that out in half an hour.

Acting is a job of permission. Someone has to give you permission to do it. But I have started to be like, 'I only want to do things that I want to do,' and writing has afforded me the luxury.

Sure, I considered myself an anarchist; I considered myself - I still am, obviously - distrustful of the government. But I also understand the virtues of civility or democracy and kindness, of course. I wasn't throwing garbage cans through shop windows.

I read a lot for me. But I'm not one of those people who gets 'The New York Times' book review and runs out and buys 10 books and is done with them and passing them out to friends, you know, two weeks later.

It has been my ambition, for some time, to bring the heart of the house back to life. 'Emma's Kitchen' is the result of that ambition - a space for me to share my passion and some of my favourite recipes.

My wife is cool enough to let me write about personal things, to be a songwriter exploring the shadowy sides of love.

It's very hard when I've seen a couple of people very beloved in my life with terrible degenerative diseases.

It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doesn't disappear underground every six months and emerge in the spring.