It's true that misunderstanding and lack of understanding are often themes in my fiction, but I am grateful for the moments when true understanding is achieved, especially between writer and reader. It's miraculous.

The idea that somehow the way forward is to abandon the past, to me, is preposterous and both undesirable and unrealistic.

When I act as a translator, I am really doing a performance for my fellow Anglophone readers in the West.

I still think in a parallel universe, I became a mathematician.

Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe,' a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts.

How can quality crime fiction not be produced with available subject matters as the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the creation of organized police forces, the dawn of forensic science, and the rise and fall of Romanticism?

The concept of 'green jobs' or a 'green economy' is often attacked as the work of the Grimm Brothers by those wedded to the grim science of free-market economics.

In addition to my comedic sensibilities, I also have a love of science. I think that it would be nice if, by the time we're doing the next version of 'Roger Rabbit,' it would be nice if I was receiving my Nobel prize the same week.