I was a writer. I just wasn't a very good one. I was lucky enough to have a playwriting teacher who told me that I'd be a better actor than I would a playwright.

You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book she would never have believed that. So you can never say never.

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on and she had a teacher she didn't like at school. I had a real crush on her so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way.

I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.

More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those you're being deprived of something.

Success comes to a writer as a rule so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

It's hard for children's authors to be accepted when they try to write adult books. J.K. Rowling is the exception because people are so eager to read anything by her but it took Judy Blume three or four tries before she had a success.

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

Writers as they gain success feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.

There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success.

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.