I think there are two prevailing views of the suburbs in the States: either they're this sort of tedious place, where everyone is the same, buys the same food and drives around in their little minivans, or the view is that the suburbs are extremely perverse in a humorous way.

There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.

When you have nothing inside you, you feel everything more, and feel you can control it all.

I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

If it hadn't been what it was, it would've been beautiful.

She said I'd better not make her unhappy because I oughta know that she's never unhappy alone.

People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.

I think it was Freud who said that we're all arrested at a certain age. For me, it was always 13.