When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.

All of my books really do look at that to degrees of difference. Technically, I do enjoy the flashback! But not just for informational material.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

Maybe someone's who's a different kind of writer [would think otherwise] - someone who'd be just as comfortable writing essays on what their novels are about. Sometimes you feel like certain novelists are like that.

Like most people, Im fascinated by characters who are completely flawed personalities, riven by anguish and doubt, and are psychologically suspect.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?