I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I've finished a book and it's a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination.

I think each book has its own way of accommodating my concerns, whether it's about race, America, technology, the city.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.

If I have three ideas and I'm working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one.

I think the world's big enough for all kinds of zombies. You can have yours and I can have mine. I think by going with slow zombies I maybe have been asserting my own kind of zombie snobbery, but I don't begrudge the youngsters their tackling, running, jumping zombies.