When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.

Novelists never have to footnote.

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.

We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.

I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.

With preference came point of view; with point of view, personality; with personality, uniqueness; with uniqueness, grief.