I never had any interest in being involved with the Boy Scouts.
I hang out all the time with kids and young scouts and I never meet kids who don't want adventure.
Every time a bit of information is erased, we know it doesn't disappear. It goes out into the environment. It may be horribly scrambled and confused, but it never really gets lost. It's just converted into a different form.
When you're stuck, and sure you've written absolutely garbage, force yourself to finish and then decide to fix or scrap it - or you will never know if you can.
If you could really guarantee that the money would be spent on something more worthwhile, I'd say, absolutely, scrap the space program, but it never works that way.
Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
I could scrape water off horses all day long. That would never get boring.
One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.
I never had intention of coming to New York or L.A. and actually doing more than scraping by - you know, doing plays. And as my career sort of progressed of its own volition, I did come to New York.
My whole career has been from scratch, so I never took it for granted that people care and support what I do.
As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.
The first time I ever screamed at someone was in a scene, and I'd never screamed at someone in my life.
I'll never make it, it will never happen, because they're never going to hear me 'cause they're screaming all the time.
I really loved Twin Peaks. When I saw the two-hour pilot, they screened it in the big theatre. I said, I don't know what is going to happen. I'm in this and I don't understand it. This is never going to sell. Who's going to watch this thing?
I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.
I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a book.
I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the screenplay, you have to sit down and tell them what's going to happen.
I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director.
Being a professional screenwriter is perhaps the hardest occupation. Because nothing is ever yours and, by the nature of the medium, you are never ultimately responsible for your work. It can be interesting - if you have another outlet.
There is the cult of the actor and of the director, and there's even been the cult of the celebrity chef and gardener, but there has never been a cult of the screenwriter. But I'm happy about that because what I crave - in a completely venal way - is creative opportunities, not recognition.
