People don't really think other people are the same.

If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway.

I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place.

Big business, for all its lobbying, is often put in line by investigative reporting, public scandals and multi-million-dollar judgments in court against those who put products on the market that are dangerous to their buyers.

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.

When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.

I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together.