Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

There is no client as scary as an innocent man.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

I think books with weak or translucent plots can survive if the character being drawn along the path is rich, interesting and multi-faceted. The opposite is not true.

You can't patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love.

I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.

I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.' I've always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

I'm concerned a little bit with the culture of celebrating the fundraise. My dad taught me that when you borrow money it's the worst day of your life.

A congressman from Texas sent out a tweet comparing President Obama to Hitler. That is ridiculous because at this point in his career Hitler had a much higher approval rating.

From a personal standpoint, playing someone judged negatively by her friends is not difficult.

The people I met and the places I been Are all what make me the man I so proudly am.

Never apologize for being yourself.

It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state... And absolute security is absolute slavery.

From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us.

I see the beauty of God's archetypal infinity reflected in the towers of infinities in set theory