These days in particular it seems not only unavoidable but even irresponsible to not acknowledge politics in some way.

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

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

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.

It wouldn't have occurred to me that while this old white man, which is to say me, was voting for Hillary Clinton, white women were choosing an overt misogynist [Donald Trump] over the first woman president. Someone will have to explain that one to me someday.

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.

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