I was a blond-haired kid with blue eyes, growing up in an Italian ghetto. I had a very high IQ. In elementary school, I skipped ahead twice. I was 10 years old when everyone else was 12.

My first wife kept calling me Sal, and I finally said to her, 'Why do you think I changed my name, honey? I really didn't like the old name.'

Changing writing styles is like an actor taking on a different part.

It's a matter of style. The Evan Hunter style and the Ed McBain style are very, very different.

In death row every rule in society is flipped.

I think being dead isn't any problem. It's the process of dying which is quite off-putting.

Let me just say that every cover of every magazine I've done has been airbrushed to death. No woman should walk around thinking that's what they should be. You shouldn't be beating yourself up.

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.