She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?

Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.

He wondered if this was what clinical depression felt like, a total numbness, a weary lack of hope.

And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.

Catch me on a good day, I think half of my books aren't too bad. Catch me on a bad day, I think I've never written a good line.

Do you honestly think Lenin is any different from J.P. Morgan? That you, if you were given absolute power, would behave any differently? Do you know the primary difference between men and gods?...Gods don't think they can become men.