The more I did it―the more it owned me. It made things matter. It put a spine into my spineless life and that spine spread, into backbone, ribs, collarbone, neck held high.It was something. Don’t...

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

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...

I don’t really consider any of my novels ‘crime’ novels.

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

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....

A second date always felt like an announcement at his age. And he never felt ready for the announcement.

The drone in my ear, it’s like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the basement walls, heads tucked into our chests....

I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?

Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, how do I let my daughter out into that? And how do i stop her? And the things you can’t...

Love is a kind of killing, Addy,” she says. “Don’t you know that?

Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound...

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.

Skye said when she looked at Lise, she saw a black mark, an aura. Just like the mark on Lise’s thigh, it was a warming. Deenie thought of it now, of Lise and the stretch...