A lot of people who end up being horrible criminals when they are adults had very abusive childhoods. You can have sympathy for that child. It does not at all, under any circumstances, diminish their responsibility for what they do.

I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood.

We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding, we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them.

I think if everyone would write down the funny stories from their own childhoods, the world would be a better place.

I'm blessed to come from a family with five brothers. We're all physical and athletic and like to work out, like to be outside, like to throw the ball around. We spent our entire childhoods on some kind of corner or in a field. We still do a Turkey Bowl every Thanksgiving. It gets competitive, man. Bloody.

A lot of us as adults haven't learned how to cope with our feelings, deal with our anger or work through the pain of our childhoods.

We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

We have to understand how the extremists got the way they are. Without that kind of understanding we'd never really get to know them. I put in nothing about their childhoods. But what I have put in is stuff about the weird symbiotic relationship between us and them.

One thing that is almost always said to me is I grew up with you. They are meeting me and feel that they actually grew up with me. I was with them during their play hours and thinking hours. I was a part of their childhoods. That's one of the most amazing things.