More and more these days what I find myself doing in my stories is making a representation of goodness and a representation of evil and then having those two run at each other full-speed, like a couple of PeeWee football players, to see what happens. Who stays standing? Whose helmet goes flying off?

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

Based on the experience of my life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it's not broke, don't fix it. And would go even further to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you'll probably make it worse.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.

I think it was a big revelation to me earlier in my life that people who appear to be evil are actually not. In other words, nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Yuck, yuck, yuck, I'm gonna be evil." I think even like Saddam Hussein or Hitler would wake up and say, "I think it's going to be a good day. I'm gonna do some really important work." And given their definition of good, they went out and did horrible things.

I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

I think when you get to export your creative impulse into something, it kind of lessens that busy energy that can be so confrontational and pissy.