I got a woman I'm loyal to above all things, above my career. She's profound to me. I'm quiet. I live in Kansas City. I work.

As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.

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.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

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.