I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.

If you're a smart writer, you listen.

When L.A.’s schizophrenia between Dreamland and Utopia was becoming socially manifest, the United States, which was always a place, went to war with America, which was always an idea.

The last thing I want is that sense of artifice - rather I want the reader drawn into the story and lost in it and vested in it. So the emotional connection is everything, albeit a connection on my terms.

Certainly the last thing I want is to be "difficult."

Though energy and inspiration diminish, experience grows - the theme of parents and kids, for instance.

The material dictates the approach.