It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.

Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.

Perhaps we've invented conspiracies for our own psychic well-being, to heal ourselves.

Something is always happening, even on the quietest days and deep into the night, if you stand a while and look.