I don't want to just mess with your head. I want to mess with your life.... I want you to miss appointments, burn dinner, skip your homework. I want you to tell your wife to take that moonlight stroll on the beach at Waikiki with the resort tennis pro while you read a few more chapters.

I tend to scare myself.

I did spend years as an addict, so I know that world, although I wish I didn't.

The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.

I want to engage the reader. I'm an emotional writer, in the sense that I would be happy if you re-read a book for the intellectual or the mental part of it, but, the first time, I just like to reach out and grab you, pull you in.

Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.

She felt like someone who drowns remembering what it was like to still be on the boat, so calm and at ease, so carelessly safe