I am very optimistic because I have seen the changes in my lifetime. I have seen the world change for the better. We always think that present times is terrible, that what's happening today, it was never worse, that the world is going in the most awful direction. But I think that the world that my grandchildren will have will be better than the one I had when I turned 20.

Dying is not easy. It's a very hard transition.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them.

It's good for a writer to come from journalism because it gives you the tools. A journalist knows that he or she can lose the reader in six lines, so try to keep the attention of the reader. Also, you learn to research, and to conduct an interview - to extract from the person whatever you need from that person.

I went to a mystery writers conference ... and I learned a lot not only from the faculty - and in the faculty we had forensic doctors, detectives, policemen, experts in guns, etc. - but from the questions of the students.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

The fear is not real, Dil Bahadur; it is only in your mind, like all other things. Our thoughts form what we believe to be reality.