I do not think that when I write a female character, I intend to reflect my thoughts on gender equality, but I always make sure that my female character is not decorative, they are human, they are good, bad, complex and close to reality.

Hollywood thrillers give away almost 70 percent of the story in promos but still the film remains interesting. In India we do a lot of cuts and put in songs in promos to create an impact.

People often get caught in situations or do something that they regret for the rest of their lives. What happens and how you try to cover up is the story. These are not career criminals.

Only three or four thrillers are made in Hindi cinema in a year. There is a fascination for crime genre but producers think thrillers don’t have that much of a market or will not get picked up for satellite rights.

The reality of split government puts a premium on creativity within the administration. President Obama needs to put the right people in charge of the agencies and then have them push the bounds of administrative power to change policy through those agencies. President Obama has a pretty good track record of this.

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.

Howie Greenfield and I started writing music when I was 13 and he was 16. We lived in the same building.

I am a very big fan of Brian Eno, of his work as an artist and making his music, and as a producer. In some ways, I have looked to his career as a model for my own.