I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.

I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.

I write what I call 'novels of consolation' for people who are bright and sophisticated.

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying

You write a lot of books; you hope you get better.

The best Paris I know now is in my head.

If you're a writer, you're always working.