In the good mystery there is nothing wasted, no sentence, no word that is not significant.

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life.

In my later novels, I systematically used the convention, and then a moment came - when did it come? With The Book of Illusions, maybe - I thought, I don't need them anymore, I don't need them, I want to integrate the dialogue into the text.

When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

Just the fact that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote by such a large number gives some validation to the impulse to stand firm. If we don't, I think within a year administration is pretty much going to dismantle American society as we've known it. I'm not sure that we're able to stop it from happening, but I don't think people should just roll over and passively watch it happen.

I believe that every artist, in one way or another, is a wounded person. It's not natural to make art.

After something crystallizes, I can write ferociously and write novels in six months, which in the past would have taken me two years.