It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.

Great big serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great big serious novel and a funny novel the funny novel is doomed.

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

Perhaps all writers walk such a line. In general - as we all do in our dreams - I believe I put something of myself into all the characters in my novels male as well as female.

I had bohemian parents in Seattle in the last '60s living in a houseboat. My dad wrote science fiction novels and painted big murals and oil paintings.

My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.

When you're 14 anything with a sword and a dragon is pretty cool. But when you're 21 and you've read 2 000 fantasy novels you start to realize that some of those books well they weren't really good. OK let's be honest. A lot of them were crap.

I wrote seven Myron Bolitar novels in a row and I never want to write a Myron book where he just solves a crime. Every one of them I want to be personal and I want him to grow and change. The problem with that is it makes the series limited you can't write a series where a guy is always going through some kind of crisis.