People shouldn't read into venue locations someone's heart.
I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, 'In the Garden of Beasts'. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote 'The Devil in the White City' and Galveston with 'Isaac's Storm'.
L.A. to me feels like music industry, and Nashville to me feels like music community.
Frequently I get asked if I'd rather have spent my career in a big city like New York or Los Angeles, where the exposure would be greater than in Seattle. My answer is no, not at all. Exposure is not important to me.
New York is a character, all on its own, and whenever you film there, it becomes part of the show. That's just the nature of being there.
A high percentage of each of my books has been written in Des Moines.
Every place is determined by the characters who are there.
Location is the key to most businesses, and the entrepreneurs typically build their reputation at a particular spot.
I've never really understood attachment to a place for reasons of birth. That my mother happened to give birth to me in a certain place doesn't, to my mind, justify any thankfulness towards that place. It could have been anywhere.
Geography is everywhere
Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me, life is an affair of places and that is the trouble.
I'm not interested in placing my signature on a house but would rather it be a signature of the place it's located.
I was in Minnesota and Illinois when I wrote 'How to Leave Hialeah.' When I come to Miami, I'm happy. I don't need to write in Miami.
People have souls, and we all accept that cities have souls, too. It's why the locations are so important.
In London, I used to play 'Boys of Summer,' but it didn't feel right, because it doesn't apply to your surroundings, to the weather. I remember being in L.A. and listening to that record and going, 'Oh, I get it now.'
I like being in real environments. I love being in the place that it's about - these sets and locations are characters in the movies. Can you imagine Breakfast at Tiffany's shot somewhere else? It's classic. Characters are part of storytelling; they're just as important as everything else.
