There are so many different worlds in Long Island. That's why it's so fascinating. Between Great Neck and Montauk, there are 10,000 worlds.

Just as you can accept Miss Marple going to tea with the vicar, there's no reason why Long Island can't have a universality to it.

My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.

I'm proud of where I'm from. I'm proud of Long Island.

Someone peeled back the surface of our town, and the whole country saw what was underneath. By Easter 1980 we were creepier than Amityville.

Gleason used to rack balls for me when he was a kid in Brooklyn and in Long Island.