Knowledge is good for life. Life is what you play off for acting.

Even though I have a highly visual imagination, I’ve had to learn just how much can be said onscreen without a word, and David and Steve have taught me that.

Science is about curiosity-driven learning, and unless you are curious, you will never find science exciting.

I still regularly read New Scientist to try to keep up with quantum theory and cosmological discoveries and so forth. And I read National Geographic—that’s not a plug.

I was 13 when this book came out in your country in 1981, and I fell in love with it. It’s one of the books that made me love puzzles.

I like to watch Netflix on double-speed. My wife says it ruins movies, but I love being able to watch twice as many movies in the same amount of time. And sometimes it doesn’t even feel rushed. I recently watched “Manchester by the Sea” on double-speed. I kind of wanted triple-speed for that one. I can’t imagine watching that in normal time.

Being willing to listen to my ideas and tell me when they are good and when they are dumb.

That is a good question. Well, one thing I do love is my elastic shoelaces. ... So, you just replace the cloth shoelaces with these elastic… I think it’s called “Lace Lock” is the brand I use. And, yeah, shoelaces seem like such 18th century technology.

So words are my true love. But I grew to love all these other genres, including jigsaws, which I was very snobby about and looked down on. I was, ‘They’re not real puzzles.’ But I am a reformed jigsaw skeptic. I can officially say I am now a jigsaw lover.

Well, I’m in the midst of writing 1,000 handwritten, personalized thank you notes to readers of my books. It’s simultaneously a major pain in the butt — it’s taking me several weeks — and also delightful. I feel like I’m getting to know the readers of my books, which is great, since writers often have a solitary existence.