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.

I was in L.A. in '08. It was a cold Saturday night. I had spread my phone number out to a score of women and was just indulging this sweet, sad, elegiac, bale loneliness - don't tell me you haven't been there.

I wanted things. Whatever it cost and whatever it took, I would do it. And that's it.

You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman.

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

It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different.