As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott.

Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris.

The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been.

I like to see writers reach bigger and bigger audiences, and stand-alones have allowed some of them to do just that.

it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.

I'm for anything that lets writers stretch, in or out of their series.