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.

I'm ultimately not so much of a professor as a progresser. And I'm ready to move away from what I consider to be this weird mid-century dream that I feel pulls us as a country, and us as a culture, backward.

I like the idea of the book being wiser than the person who wrote it. None of the novels I've written are direct transcriptions of me blathering over dinner with a glass of wine in my hand. I don't hold any illusion of those conversations being of particular value. The books, though, are - I hope - bigger than my opinions, investigations that go beyond my own intellect or wit.

It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R.E.M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.

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

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.

My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.