As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

Tell me anything. Tell me everything. Revoke our time apart. Love me fierce in danger.

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I learn things late-and only the hard way.

Your fate is never determined when your massive imagination is.

Sure relationships include arguments, but pain is not a side-effect of love.

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history

It takes a lot of work to put together a marriage, to put together a family and a home.

[My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experience them in one particular instant of my emotional and imaginative life. . .

Most people treat the news media like the exercise bike they have in their basement. They're glad it's there but they never use it.

The horse would plough, the ox would drive the car. No; do the work you know, and tarry where you are.

The person who gossips is a terrorist who drops a bomb, destroys, and they destroy others.

The older you get, the more you learn to see what you've been taught to see. When you're a kid, you see what's there.

You should strive to find happiness every day and not believe that it comes at the end of the journey.