Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been right in front of them. A traffic ticket in Brooklyn is how they got ["Son of Sam" serial killer] David Berkowitz. You've just got to look.

I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world.

My role relationship to the event will continue to mutate. My relationship to my mother will continue to change as I revise my judgments of her depending on what I learn about her. It goes on. But I feel no less obsessive about my work and no less passionately committed to the life I have now, but I feel poised inside. Which is a good thing to feel at 48.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.

Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good?