I have had many more close women friends than men, and I've always assumed that comes from the fact that in my family there was such a disproportionate female element.

Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on.

Friendships are the family we make - not the one we inherit. I've always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.