I do miss the Chocolate City of my youth.

Many fathers and sons never get to reconcile their differences or come to an understanding that fills the gap between love and expectations.

The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

After college, I spent a decade working the kinds of jobs that I write about - bartender, shoe salesman, kitchen man - while voraciously reading novels.

As a child, I was an obsessive reader, as was everybody in my family all winter long with my father. I think I was only 8 when I read Edward Gibbon's 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.

I'm not a role model. I say parents should parent and monitor their kids.

Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned.