Secrets are never secure because they are always at risk of being found out.

The first horror movie I saw, in first or second grade, was My Bloody Valentine [1981], where there's a deranged killer in a miner mask stalking a small coal town.

Today, MTV doesn't play videos anymore, but YouTube certainly has become the next MTV.

There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.

I had lived in New York since 1996, sometimes in the worst neighborhoods, without even locking my door half the time.

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. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.

I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].