Which is - you know like check it out I'm pretty young I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book right?

Usually I write about what I care about which is a weakness but I think also a strength.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

When I write down my thoughts they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

To achieve lasting literature fictional or factual a writer needs perceptive vision absorptive capacity and creative strength.

When I learnt to write I became my own master I became very strong and that strength is with me to this very day.

I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics sports culture and crime and write it up on deadline.

I love sports as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies as all writers seem to.

I sort of try to write everything for me. I'm a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don't remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio. I'm trying to make sure the jokes are self-contained so they're accessible to everyone.

I told another ESPN friend here I love all sports. I can't think of any I don't love. I've even come to appreciate cricket. Maybe I could play a sportswriter. I don't know. Anything in the sports realm is appealing.

One of my first jobs was at the Boston Globe. I worked in the sports department six months a year. When I was ready to graduate the sports editor gave me a job as a schoolboy sports writer.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball the jump shot or the opposing ball carrier.

I'm a Hollywood writer so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

I don't read a lot of the sports because I think people sometimes either build it up or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I'm not talking about acting or anything like that I'm talking about people I admire whether it's a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician whatever.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages sometimes I write them in a column sometimes in a novel sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

Golf is a game in which you yell 'fore ' shoot six and write down five.

I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it because I always want to talk about certain things in society.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

The writer is the person who stands outside society independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.

In a repressive society a writer can be deeply influential but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption the act of terror may be the only meaningful act.