Working 14 hours a day until you're 55 and missing your kids growing up is not what I would consider a recipe for happiness.

One gains a double benefit in writing about the past, conjuring up how things might have been, and at the same time acquiring a different perspective on the present.

My literary career was a fluke. Utterly unexpected.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

I'm always put in the unfortunate position of asking people to donate money and people I know in bands to play benefit concerts and all this stuff.

It's such a stupid thing to sign a band and then demand a hit right away to instantly recoup the money. The point is, you have to do it by building your own following, and that is not necessarily done by writing instant hits.

Cheap money feels like the most natural thing in the world - if you don't think about why it's so cheap.

Nobody thought about having more money than you could ever spend.