Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.

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.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

I'd never been interested in the Kennedy assassination until '88, when I read Libra. And from that point, I went out and bought the existing Kennedy theory books, most of which are outlandish. But what DeLillo posits - some rogue CIA guys - is the most dramatically sound, plausible explanation for it.

The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse watches and all this intolerable stuff.