This is not an international thriller so much as a fiercely literate attempt to subvert the thriller genre itself.

I think that I am profoundly influenced by writers who have explored loss, and longing, and fear. Those influences have turned me into a thriller writer, essentially.

I do believe in the Kinsey scale, I think many of us fall in different places on the scale and I think it's for each one of us to decide where we are on the scale, it's not for someone else to decide for us.

I made the decision that, to be happy and to be content, I needed to live the life of an exclusive homosexual. I don't mean an elitist homosexual, but I mean someone who is exclusively pursuing partners of the same gender.

The good thing about New Orleans is that, overall, it's an accepting place. It's accepting of eccentricity, it's accepting of excess, it's accepting of color, in the sense of culture, not necessarily in the sense of race.

Make a beautiful mess and clean it up later.

If you're doing something, if you're following something that is directly at odds with who you are, you've got to slow down and ask yourself why you're following that dream.