Reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed.

If all the diplomats were kicked out, the UN could be turned into the finest bordello in the world and do just as much, if not more, for international harmony.

No one you'd really like to see in public office has the bad taste to run.

I survived a number of garage bands during my teens and early twenties, both as drummer and guitarist. It's nigh impossible for me to listen to music without parsing it.

Writing is solitary, so I love going out once in a while and meeting my readers. I'll often hang with them after a signing for some beers. They're invariably bright!

If I don't already know a song's chord progression, I'll stop writing and try to figure it out. I can occasionally listen to unstructured, amelodic ambient music, but I prefer no music. I don't need silence - I can write just about anywhere - but music is a major distraction.

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character.