Nick Bilton's nonfiction reads like thrillers. His secret came from studying how Alfred Hitchcock made you care about murderers: "The biggest lesson I've ever learned was a book I read about how to write murder mysteries. I sought the book out because when I was writing the Twitter story, I had written a draft and gave it to a friend to read. He got to page 160 of a 300-page book, and he wrote in big red letters: I hate them all." "So I started thinking: who do you want to read that you hate? A murderer. So I started studying: How does Hitchcock do it?" "When you're reading a book or watching a movie, you're not just following the story, you're imagining yourself in it. That's why we love heist movies. You're on the edge of your seat because you're thinking: what would I do if I was that person?" "Every murderer has a mother that loves them, because your mother will always love you. That's why Hitchcock gave these really bad people mothers. And murder mystery writers make you human: murderers still lose their car keys. They drop their grocery bag." "Even if you can't identify with the desire to murder someone, you can identify with those moments, and then you can put yourself in the body of the character."