When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

I've always been sort of interested in the rural countryside. Things happen out there that are very strange to city dwellers.

Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.

Nuts don’t come in bunches. Only grapes do.

They don't have a lot of crime in the countryside other than theft. But every once in a while, things turn ugly, and when they turn ugly, they turn very ugly.

Catholics don't scream about Jesus, they scream about the bishop.

Well, I am becoming doddering and old but I have - I'm writing two books a year now. It's like 220,000 words or something like finished, and, honest to God, I can't do that. I really do need the help of, you know, other people working with me.