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.

I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.

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

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years.

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

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.