I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.

You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman.

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

Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.

Periodically I just notch up. And everyone among my colleagues thinks that Perfidia - in its accessibility, its big throbbing heart - will be the biggest notch up yet. We'll see what happens. It's on my ass.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

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.