When I talk to film students, I always say, 'Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes,' because that's such a great learning tool.

For a film, when you condense, you don't want to keep going back to the same setting over and over.

People are nervous about their kids, and they're worried about the disintegration of families and the type of media culture they're living in.

If you decide to tell a kid that looks don't matter, she can prove you wrong every day. Because they see it everywhere. That is age-old, going back to the Greeks, but now we're bombarded nonstop.

I don't like the idea of spirituality done the way it's done. The only way I could understand it was through creativity, not by going to an Ashram, or finding a guru or joining a temple. I made work out of it.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

In writing my historical novels, I have to rely upon my imagination to a great extent. I think of it as 'filling in the blanks.' Medieval chroniclers could be callously indifferent to the needs of future novelists. But I think there is a great difference between filling in the blanks and distorting known facts.

For so long, we had to write to pay a bill, we had to write in many instances where maybe you weren't even inspired to write because it was your job. That's how passion, creativity, and love gets killed.