Peter Craig
Peter Craig is an American novelist and screenwriter.
Craig grew up in Southern California and Oregon. He is the son of actress Sally Field and Steve Craig. He has two daughters from his first marriage, to poet and food writer Amy Scattergood. He was remarried in 2008 to Jennifer DeFrancisco, with whom he has a son.
Craig's first novel, The Martini Shot, published in 1998, chronicles has-been action film star Charlie West's troubled relationship with his two children. His second novel, Hot Plastic, published in 2004, portrays the complex relationship between credit card con artist Jerry Swift and his genius son, both of whom are attracted to the same woman. His most recent novel, Blood Father, published in 2005, tells of aging biker John Link and his teenage daughter, caught up in a drug bust gone wrong.
As a screenwriter, Craig has written the Warner Bros. picture The Town with Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard. He adapted the screenplays for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 with Danny Strong.
“Kevin tried to sleep with a pillow tight over his face, and he nearly suffocated himself. When he tiptoed over to close the door, they were talking in a subdued tone on the narrow couch. Colette's bare legs were curled up on the pillows, her head riding on the camelback motion of his chest. But her eyes were open, and she looked more adrift than comforted. In a tired baritone, Jerry was talking about prison. It was a horror story -- about the echoing screams of young kids and eyeballs cut open with smuggled razor blades, beginning as the usual speech about the hell he'd seen. But somehow it bcame a lonesome country-western love song, about how every long night of his life he had dreamed of a woman like her-- quick-witted and beautiful and tenacious. It was more than Kevin expected from the man. He told her that if he could buy her safe passage out of this life, hers and Kevin's, he would; but it was hard with a teenage son always pressing to know more and a tiring and insatiable young girlfriend who wanted to devour the world. Think of the pressure on him. "You need to know that we're together like this partly because of you. You keep us up and running. I know it and Kevin knows it. I'm not a good person, Colette -- I never claimed to be, I don't want to be, and you can't expect me to be. But look me in the eye and accept me as a snake, and I'll tell you whatever you're waiting to hear: I need you, I want you, I hurt for you, down in the dust, honey, down in the dust of my bones."She interrupted him with kisses that sounded like determined sips at a scalding drink.”
“You keep talking about ruining something. Why worry about that? We've been ruined for a long time. I'm good in the ruins; it's my hometown.”
“Just for future reference, don't use words like "love" anymore. It's a very sensitive word and it wears out quickly. Romeo barely says it, but John Hinckley filled up a whole journal with it. To put it into your terms, it's a currency that's easily devalued. Pretty soon you're saying it whenever you hang up the phone or whenever you leave. It turns into an apology. Then it's an excuse. Some assholes want it to be a bulletproof vest: don't hate me; I love you. But mostly it just means--more. More, more--give me something more. A couple of years from now, when you're on your own completely, if you really fall in love, if it really comes to that--and I pity you if it does--you have to look right down into the black of her eyes, right down into the emptiness in there and feel everything, absolutely everything she needs and you have to be willing to drown in it, Kevin. You'd have to want to be crushed, buried alive. Because that's what real love feels like--choking. They used to bury some women in their wedding dresses, you know. I thought it was because all those husbands were too cheap to spring for another gown, but now it makes sense: love is your first foot in the grave. That's why the second most abused word is "forever".”