The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.
“It's kind of part of human nature to want to know the truth or want to be in on the secret. For stories that focus in on that - like whodunits - it's easy to get drawn into.”