The Victorians, they were like the Germans in World War II. They could not stop recording details about their lives and their age.

There's a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don't believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.

All violence flows from the same source ... the need for power. Power is the only true morality ... the only deathless god, and the appetite for violence is its only commandment.

What, after all, is more real to us than the geography of our childhoods?

Its hard to die. Harder to live

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

The best advice that an accomplished writer could give a beginning writer is probably, "Find your slide and then grease it." Almost every writer that wants a rewarding career, in terms of money and status and number of readers, finally finds a certain genre or certain style that he or she sticks with until reaching a critical mass of readership. And I've violated this from the get-go.