I should figure out why I'm so much more interested in doing something that I think is really hard. But, somehow, the thing that is hard for me feels more noble.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.

The Swedish he knew was mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of subjects.

Seeing images of violence - it's always about how somebody's going to kill you.