I kept saying, "Stop me now. It's going to my head." I got some photos. Really, I did! It's not my noblest sexual self in these moments, but I want to have fun. I want to undress. I get off my leash to go out and perform. Some other writers are just discomforted by the way I behave in public. Because they're loath to perform.

I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.

For a much lauded writer, I'm not terribly self-absorbed. In social situations, which are difficult for me - I mean, this is an interview - I'm normally uncomfortable talking about myself.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.

My father actually went to college, and my mother went to nursing school, so, you know. I wouldn't... They were actually too square and right-wing to be hip, too well-educated to be white trash, too sexy to be square. They really didn't fit any mold. They weren't really hipsters. They were just - they were two of a kind, those two.

I always cringe when a male friend of mine, who's very fixated on women, puts "compatibility" at the top of his list of attributes that he would be looking for in a woman. I would replace compatibility with dialectic.