Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber pieces, and that's my enrichment.

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

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.

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

I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.

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.

There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous.