I want to have enough data, so I won't write myself into thin air, so that I can extrapolate and give you this secret human infrastructure. The only way I sate my own curiosity is to create this from scratch. There must be commanding love stories. There must be great moral cost.

And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism - you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there.

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

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

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.

Other people, some other writers, will win certain accolades or sell in far greater numbers than me - and I'm a legitimate best-selling author - but I live and die for the work. That's thrilling to me. It's thrilling that I do for others what certain writers did for me when I was a kid.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.