Asked for advice from someone in high school who wanted to be a writer, he said, “Do not follow advice that doesn’t make sense. I work from experience, what I know, my imagination. I see a wall with fictional people on one side and real people on the other. While I’m writing, the fictional people reach through the wall and borrow from the real people.”
Just as the United States had managed to largely get rid of the problem of political corruption by making the bribery of legislators effectively legal (it was redefined as “lobbying”), so the problem of loan-sharking was brushed aside by making real interest rates of 25 percent, 50 percent, or even in some cases (for instance for payday loans) 120 percent annually, once typical only of organized crime, perfectly legal — and therefore, enforceable no longer by just hired goons and the sort of people who place mutilated animals on their victims’ doorsteps, but by judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and police.