The biggest influence on my writing, besides snagging some ideas about black humor, was that the paper mill had a program where they paid 75 percent of the tuition and book [costs] for employees who wanted to go to college part-time.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.

Nostalgia is partly illusion in that we remember things differently as we get older, etc. But that doesn't mean, when historians look back on the 1950s, say, from the year 2090, it won't be judged as a saner, slower, less narcissistic, more family-focused, and economically secure time.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].

Id always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

I sort of like writing about weird characters, I guess.

[Degree in English] gave me a little more self-confidence, to know that I'd managed to complete something like that.