For all sad words of tongue and pen The saddest are these 'It might have been'.

It's harder and harder to make a well-done romantic comedy these days because the conventions have been so played out.

After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time I was dissatisfied with romantic doom yet didn't see much way around it.

I try to speak of a love that not necessarily romantic. I think there is so much love between people and so much love people want to give but it's harder and harder these days to show that to celebrate that you know?

Well there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.

I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.

So many women today have become so focused on their children they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.

I've always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes.

Even actresses that you really admire like Reese Witherspoon you think 'Another romantic comedy?' You see her in something like 'Walk the Line' and think 'God you're so great!' And then you think 'Why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies?' But of course it's for money and status.

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because in general they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!