Any time you have poverty, joblessness, sub-par public schools, and a lack of opportunity, you're going to have a high rate of crime.

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.

I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.

I'm proud to be a crime novelist. What I've chosen is the best way to convey the questions I'm trying to raise.

I live in a blue-collar neighborhood, and if anyone knows what I do for a living, they don't seem to care.

The Next Right Thing has humanity, humor, and insight to burn. Author Dan Barden takes the clay of the California hard-boiled novel and shapes it into something new.

Top-shelf fiction, a Crown Royal ride into the heart of Night and New York. Con Lehane's work is reminiscent of the best of Lawrence Block, which is to say that this is very good stuff, indeed.

Like her father, Bess never forgot a hurt of a service.

When we do not succeed to be ourselves, we finally realize that is was completely useless to exist...

The only way marriage can work is if a man respects the woman and she is a thinking woman and he wants to work on the marriage.

For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they do but marshal us the way that we are going.

I've had a big heart my whole life; all the Korn fans know that. A lot of people told me that I was different.

Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.

Matt Bomer and I went to Carnegie Mellon for drama together.

One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers.

that's what it was like waking up in the crypts. no-longer-dead. but without her. like burning alive.

When you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening.