All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.

I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't possess that kind of mind. I have a researcher who compiles the fact sheets and chronologies that allow me to write these big books of mine.

I'm grateful for the life I have. I lived bad for many years, and I've got a great life now. I've got the kind of life people only dream about.

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

I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid.

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

I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.