One definition of noir is where a not-so-good man or woman tries to touch something good - and fails.

Chinatown is tremendously interesting... It's a part of the city that hasn't really been explored in crime literature or in any general literature. It's as though Chinatown didn't exist. People write about New York without mentioning Chinatown at all.

What crime writers are doing connects deeper into a cultural hunger. Crime is important. When you open up a book that has a body that's dead, that matters. It matters more than a certain level of suburban angst; it really does.

I wanted a real profession. And I'd always been interested in architecture and in design and in, really, what makes things work. And understanding what's kind of behind the walls and why things stand up and some things don't.

I always had a feeling when I was a kid that I didn't really know what was going on. Everybody else knew stuff that I didn't know.

Writing a book, you can only get stopped by yourself.