"I've been lucky in that my writing's been all over the place since the beginning, so the only pigeonhole I've had to deal with is that of being a literary writer.  While I sometimes wish publishers would recognize the genre elements in certain of my novels and market them accordingly—for their own gain, as well as mine—I'm just happy to get the books between the covers."

"You have to do it better or different that it's been done before, otherwise there's no point doing it.  But that challenge is what makes writing a book ... so much fun."

"I see major thematic and even dramatic similarities between all my books.  In novels, there's no masking one's interests and obsessions."

"It's good to go a little crazy every once in a while.  Keeps the reader off balance."

"The key for me in writing character is finding out who are the most important people in my characters' lives, and what they wish they could make clear to them."

"The further you get into a book—the longer you live with a character—the more you realize that nobody's regular, nobody's average.  Everyone's life is incredibly complex."

"There's always a stretch (and sometimes a few) in writing a novel when that intensity kicks in and you feel it taking over everything, even your time away from the desk.  It's a weird trick, your mind craving that imaginary world."

"Saul Bellow says that a writer is just a reader moved to emulation, and that's what happened with me."