Criminal court is where bad people are on their best behavior. It's much more dangerous for lawyers and judges in family court, where good people are at their worst.

The most interesting character to me is someone who is stuck in the no man's land between Belief and Unbelief, Faith and Faithlessness. I'm capitalizing like a German, but it doesn't matter whether it's faith in a person or in God, or belief in science or whatever, it's the desperate in-between state that makes for interesting dramatic tension.

And it was back in the mid-1980s, and as I point out in a piece, that was when we are spending about eight percent of our gross domestic product on health care. And even then, we had the impression that so much of the excessive, aggressive medical treatment that took place at the end of life was not only unnecessary but it was cruel.

I'm always working. I don't really set limits. I tend to go in bursts. And in between, I'm doing my taxes, answering the phone, and all those kinds of things. I waste a lot of time. Computers take a lot of time. I love computers.

As a society, we pick words that are offensive based on what we're most afraid of. We associate sounds with some dangerous idea, and right now the most dangerous thing to us are the differences between us.

Criminal court is where bad people are on their best behavior. It's much more dangerous for lawyers and judges in family court, where good people are at their worst.

I begin every novel with the vow that I will not write about technology, Catholicism, or Hell. As you know, I end up writing about all three. They just happen to be personal obsessions of mine.