His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.(Speaking about Ronald Reagan)

A part of that [timewrap] for me was growing up in a culture that violence had always been a part of. It wasn't an aberration, though I realize that in retrospect. I grew up in the part of the U.S. where all of Cormac McCarthy's novels are set and that's a pretty violent place.

I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.

There's an idea called "gray man", in the security business, that I find interesting. They teach people to dress unobtrusively. Chinos instead of combat pants, and if you really need the extra pockets, a better design conceals them. They assume, actually, that the bad guys will shoot all the guys wearing combat pants first, just to be sure.

I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting. I actually tend to suspect that in real life, there have always been very strong female characters, but at certain stages of society, they've been asked to cool it.

I've always been interested in people who aren't from anywhere in particular. I think it's all melting. This has been true for as long as I can remember in my adult life.

The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet.