The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

We have today a fairly thorough knowledge of the early Greco-Roman period because our motivations are the same.

I'm a better person in a relationship and I'm a happier person. I need to come home at the end of the day and have it not be about me and my freaking hair and makeup and character motivations anymore. And I think my work is more inspired when home is safe and sound and solid because what I do for a living is so bananas and so insecure.

You can't be funny for funny's sake. You try to get as outrageous situation as you can but it always has to be believable and based in real character motivations and what people would really do.

Well yeah. At a certain point you've got to be really honest with yourself. Like 'Why am I doing this? What are my motivations?' Like if you get into it because you want to be famous? Then you've got a long row to hoe. But if you really feel like it's a labour of love and it's something you're actually legitimately good at then it's not that hard to keep plugging away.

It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations.

I don't think immortality is necessarily the key to understanding the world. You have to be careful with what you think you're achieving. I'm all for science discovering amazing and fantastic things about our world but I think the motivations behind it are slightly askew.