I do try not to dwell on the past too much, because I have a tendency to do that, and as I've gotten older, I've gotten very good at distancing myself from shoulda, woulda, coulda.

I grew up in an environment where it was permittable to use violence to solve a problem. But it was not permittable ever to call the police under any circumstances. That was the kind of doctrine of my household. My dad was a career-long criminal, and you weren't calling the police for any reason.

You go through this business and you meet people that you bond with, and you get to go make movies with them. It's wonderful. What I've always dreamt of, in my career, is to have a brotherhood of collaborators, and go in and out of working with them. I'm just starting to get that, and it's really lovely.

In the early part of your career you are always compared with somebody until you can stand on your own two feet.

I deal with the authors I work with, agents, and other departments of the company, talking about both the books that I'm working on and everyone else's. Then there's dealing with foreign publishers: foreigners visit all the time. People want to bounce things off the publisher, and a lot of it is encouragement.

If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.

Eventually I will own my own company and will provide advice to athletes and artists from the entertainment industry.

I've been fortunate my whole career because I've had great guys to learn from.