I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Some people don’t respond to civility.

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

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.

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 am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.

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