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.

The novel is final form; it's the ultimate individual final form. Television and motion pictures never get there. You'd be fabulous to think that something you write is even going to be filmed. I give it the best shot of which I'm capable. But it's more a payday for me. And if I didn't have alimony and the full-time assistant.

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

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

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.

As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.

I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.