I don't check for Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly or any of these demons on the Right. They don't wake me up in the morning. I don't care about them, and they certainly don't drive the conversations I'm thinking about, but they do have an audience, and they do lie all day, every day about disenfranchised people.

Like a lot of people, I've often wondered what else I might have been. When I was younger, but even after I was a child, I thought Batman was the whole package. Smart, calculating, pragmatic. Depressed, but in a way women found hot. Tragic at his core and struggling with his demons while trying to save the world.

One of the things I did to make myself feel better is that I kicked up my running even more. I knew that I had to stay active, that I had to keep living as if my life was actually going to unfold naturally because when you stop, when you freeze, and you think about it, that's when the demons come and can drag you down.

The thing I find really scary about ghosts and demons is that you don't really know what they are or where they are. They're not very well understood. You don't know what they want from you. So it's the kind of thing you don't even know how to defend yourself against. Anything that's unknown and mysterious is very scary.

I have very close friends who are very devout Catholics, and I talked to them before the 'Da Vinci Code,' and it was very difficult for them, but I talked to them before 'Angels and Demons,' and they said the scandal, abuse of power and violence was part of church history, which you can read about in the Vatican bookstore.

I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that's in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic, so that's why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I'm really interested in that subject.

The demons you have are what motivate you to make your art. This is what drives the detective, this is what drives the painter, this is what drives the writer: a conflicting urge to forget pain and at the same time remember it and fight for some kind of justice. I know these powerful things are inside of me and everyone in some way or another.

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