I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.

The 250-page outline for American Tabloid. The books are so dense. They're so complex, you cannot write like I write off the top of your head. It's the combination of that meticulousness and the power of the prose and, I think, the depth of the characterizations and the risks that I've taken with language that give the books their clout. And that's where I get pissed off at a lot of my younger readers.

We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection.

I almost had an intransigent mental spirit. I always wanted things.

The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.

I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.

Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.