There is a value to moving more slowly through a story.

I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.

There’s a great scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974] that I’m obsessed with: Sally is being chased by Leatherface with a chainsaw... And she runs into thorn bushes. And she’s getting tangled up in it because she’s running fast... But Sally needs to move slowly in order to get through the bushes - she will get farther faster by going slowly because her hair and clothes won’t get tangled and caught. There’s something really beautiful about understanding that, while someone’s chasing you with a chainsaw, you have to move more slowly in order to get away.

I've never even done a residency.

I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.

Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.