There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.

You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

When you create a fence, you keep people out, but you also limit your mobility.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

There's something about fear and aesthetic that go hand in hand.

It is a little out of touch to presume that someone wants to follow your every observation and insight over the course of hundreds of pages without any sort of payoff. That's why writing isn't a one-way street. You have to give something back: an interesting plot, a surprise, a laugh, a moment of tenderness, a mystery for the reader to piece together.

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