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On how writing a novel differs from writing a screenplay

"This particular novel, this was one of the greatest creative experiences I've had in my life, because there were no restrictions in terms of budget. When you're writing a screenplay, you have to think 'this scene can only go on for three pages, because we're not going to be able to afford the fourth page, or we're not going to be able to do this' — I think it's a thematic sequel, in a weird way, to The Goonies. People have been asking me for years to write a sequel to The Goonies, and I could never find a way to write a sequel, so that's what House of Secrets has become. So for all those people who love The Goonies, this is closest you're probably going to get to it.

"For me, I love writing it because I can stop — I can get into a Monty Python-esque sequence where two pirates are arguing over whether one of the pirates' tattoo is a dolphin or a shark. I wouldn't do that in a screenplay."

On whether movie technology is making it harder to dazzle children

"I think it is getting more difficult. We're in an interesting place right now because the latest 3-D technology that we're seeing is going to be applied to The Great Gatsby. Now how amazing is that? I guess you have to keep pushing the boundaries. So you know, the images that are in this book — and the first image that really struck me — years ago, when I was running down by Crissy Field down in San Francisco, I got to that point that listeners will remember sort of looks like the Vertigo shot, by the Golden Gate Bridge with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. And I stopped and I'm looking around and I'm looking at these houses nearby that are dangerously close to the cliff and the ocean, and I thought, what if one of these houses slid off the side of the cliff and fell into the ocean and was floating? For whatever reason — I thought, that's an image I've never seen. I've never seen a house floating on the bay. And then it occurred to me how cool it would be to have a pirate ship attacking that house and the inhabitants of the house had to sort of race through the house as cannonballs were flying through the walls. And that image always stuck with me. And it's kind of the image you see at the front of the book, at this point. It's kind of come full circle."

On the plans for the second book in the series

"Ned [Vizzini] and I are 130 pages into Book 2, and it's incredibly fun. The concept for me of these characters, who look like they just escaped from the last episode of Game of Thrones, about to kill these kids, when suddenly a World War I fighter jet crashes directly over them and inadvertently saves their lives, and out steps a dashing 18-year-old fighter pilot. Being able to combine those two worlds in the second book and in, hopefully, a third book will enable us to bring other worlds into the House of Secrets series."

On why he's still working

"People say to me, 'Why don't you just stop already? You know, you've made a bunch of movies, they've been successful, why don't you retire and golf?' And for me, it's only the — I really feel like I have not accomplished what I want to accomplish. I really have not gone there yet. I don't feel like I've made a film that is as good as I want it to be. I always feel that, something has to be better. And for me, I much prefer dropping dead at a very old age — none of us want to drop dead at a young age — on a movie set. You know, I want to continue trying to do better work. I've seen Clint Eastwood do it over the years — he just keeps getting better and better, and he's someone I admire."

Read an excerpt of House of Secrets

When Edna O'Brien wrote The Country Girls in 1960, the book was acclaimed by critics, banned by the Irish Censorship Board and burned in churches for suggesting that the two small-town girls at the center of the book had romantic lives. Oh, why be obscure? Sex lives.

Crushed blossoms at the end of the summer: teach me
how to coax nectar from the bloom of another.

Burned rice on the stove again: what's to love
but my imperfections — you'll forgive me another.

Butter by a kettle always melts, warns the proverb.
Heated, greased, we slip one into the other.

When, inexplicably, you enter my prayers,
I hear messages from one god or another.

Me encanta cantar, cuando estoy sola, en el carro.
My mother tongue dissolves. I speak in another.

Heart-thief, enter the fields like a woman in love,
vase in one hand, shears in the other

From Dhaka Dust, copyright 2011 by Dilruba Ahmed. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

On poet Gwendolyn Brooks and how she recorded Chicago's vibrancy

"She's a really interesting case because she also overlaps with Mies in a very particular way: She, as a young woman, worked in this huge apartment building on, I want to say, 31st Street, 34th Street, called The Mecca, which became famous. There were blues songs written about it. And at The Mecca, Gwendolyn Brooks really got her sense of what this new Chicago was going to be like, the new black Chicago in Bronzeville. And at the same time, this is also part of where the Armour Institute, [Illinois Institute of Technology] campus is going to be. Mies ends up in 1955 building his great masterpiece crown hall on the site of The Mecca. So you have this overlap of these two great minds of Chicago talking about the same place in very, very different ways: Brooks from the bottom up and Mies very much from the top down, both masterpieces.

"Brooks was tapped into Chicago in a very special way in that she spoke so much about the domestic aspects of life. One of my favorite photos of her is her walking down 63rd Street with her kids in tow, groceries in her arms — no one notices who she is. She's a great poet of the domestic, and I think that's very true to the Chicago spirit."

On Chicago's street violence

"The most important point about those few streets in the middle of the city is that they belong to all of Chicago. And one of the impulses that one sees there is this discussion of Chicago and black Chicago. And in ... all that I've read, in interviews, there's often this discussion of two different cities. And I think when Chicago finally wraps its hands around all of itself and doesn't speak of it in these two different terms, I think they're going to be a lot closer to solving some of these problems."

Read an excerpt of The Third Coast