Scoundrels, con men, and scalawags. Ne'er-do-wells, thieves, cheats, and rascals. Bad boys and bad girls. Swindlers, seducers, deceivers, flimflam men, imposter, frauds, fakes, liars, cads, tricksters . . . they go by many names and they turn up in stories of all sorts, in every genre under the sun, in myth and legend . . . and, oh, everywhere in history as well. They are the children of Loki, the brothers of Coyote. Sometimes they are heroes. Sometimes they are villains. More often they are something in between, grey characters . . . and grey has long been my favorite color. It is so much more interesting than black or white.

Books should broaden us, take us to places we have never been and show us things we've never seen, expand our horizons and our way of looking at the world. Limiting your reading to a single genre defeats that. [It seems to me] that there are good stories and bad stories, and that is the only distinction that truly matters.