I didn't really start publishing books until I was 40 because I was busy being a McDonald's employee. So there's always a sense of trying to make up for lost time.

How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.

There was a weird intimacy, sitting in a car together. Couples sat in cars. Cops and their partners. Strangers became unstrange, sharing a windshield view of the world.

Creativity is the opposite of TV

All my life I'd gone for women who were a little off.

I think it's just too kinda juicy and compelling to imagine people in their private lives, but then half the time people's private lives are just so much more bizarre and Ted Haggard-like than you could ever imagine. It's almost hard to write fiction anymore.

Junkies are liars. They have to be professionally.