The broader message is that technological hubris will always get you in trouble with nature.

He didn't come across as a thug or as someone looking for trouble. He was a nice, articulate and charming guy. ... Local scenes in rap can be really fragmented but this may cause people to band together.

As a rule, I am very skeptical of tying books to anniversaries. I don't think readers care. I also feel that it just about guarantees that somebody else will be writing a book on the same subject, but being a former journalist, I'm always interested in, like, why write about something today? Why do it now?

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.

I'm often associated with parallel narratives or dual narratives. The 'Devil in the White City' was a fluke.

If I'd been living in Berlin in 1933-34, could I possibly have foreseen the Holocaust and all the corollary horrors of World War II? And if I had, would I have done anything about it? I also started to wonder: how does a culture slip its moorings?