How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

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

History is a state of yearning. I yearn for Kay Lake throughout this entire thing. There's an essay I've written where I talked about living in the past. There's a whole motif in the book of then and now. And I lived there.

How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

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.

I'd never been interested in the Kennedy assassination until '88, when I read Libra. And from that point, I went out and bought the existing Kennedy theory books, most of which are outlandish. But what DeLillo posits - some rogue CIA guys - is the most dramatically sound, plausible explanation for 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.