I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid.

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different.

Periodically I just notch up. And everyone among my colleagues thinks that Perfidia - in its accessibility, its big throbbing heart - will be the biggest notch up yet. We'll see what happens. It's on my ass.

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.

I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.

Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.