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.
Jonathan Tropper
I still enjoy the tactile sensation of holding a book. But when I need to read fast for work, I use the Kindle App on my iPad.
Adapting your own book is like performing open-heart surgery on your own child.
'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.
When I was sixteen, I wrote the first hundred or so pages of a novel about a piano that was haunted by the ghost of an evil blues musician.
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 wrote the screenplay for 'This Is Where I Leave You' - all 40 drafts of it.
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.
I played piano in a covers band, but that didn't especially help with girls. There is never a piano around after the shows. Guys with the guitars were the ones who got lucky.
On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order.
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.
There's something really satisfying if you've created a bunch of characters that have withstood 25 episodes.
I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.
I occasionally experience the discomfort of people assuming my work is autobiographical.
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.
I'm at my desk before nine, and I go all day. I'm not necessarily productive all day, but really, who is?
Screenwriting and the movie stuff could all disappear tomorrow, but to sit down with my laptop and still tell stories is my day job. I didn't believe I'd actually get to do it for a living.
There's a satisfaction I get from writing fiction that I will never get from screenwriting.
You never have to change a book for budget.
