I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putting it forth for the world.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.

Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.

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

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.

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