All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

A story should have a beginning a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order.

Another challenge? Getting up at 6:30 in the morning to go act. It's not fun acting that early in the morning or acting at 4 A.M in the middle of the night or in the morning when you're really tired. That's a challenge. What a luxurious problem to have.

It is a challenge with the global fame to try to act like I put my pants on one leg at a time when in fact I have Pippa Middleton help me put my pants on every morning. She's my lady-in-waiting as well.

I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.

I've had people ask me in interviews what it's like to have money but that's not how it is. I have a middle-class life. I have a room in London but not a house nor a BMW.

Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes which is nepotism the old-boy network.

When I was young I had two older sisters and since I was the youngest in my family my mom took me around with her all the time. I was forever with her when she was having coffee in the middle of the afternoon with her three sisters. And they would talk about men. I absorbed a lot of that.

Miami Beach - that's where I grew up in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor who was my roommate - my grandparents my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.