We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.

In Europe, I'm recognized on the street sometimes. And that's cool, because I don't have to live there and deal with it every day. Unless you're Stephen King - a great writer, by the way, and anyone who says different knows nothing about the craft - you're more likely to be recognized in America if you play in a soap opera than if you're a novelist.

The most popular American fiction seems to be about successful people who win, and good crime fiction typically does not explore that world. But honestly, if all crime fiction was quality fiction, it would be taken more seriously.

I'm proud to be a crime novelist. What I've chosen is the best way to convey the questions I'm trying to raise.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.

I don't believe that murders can be "solved." I think that this is the big lie of the mystery novel, that you should close the book and feel that the world is back in order and everything's all right. I want the reader to know that the world is not all right, and maybe we ought to do something about it.