As a reporter, you develop an ear for dialogue because it's your job to capture it accurately.

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.

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

I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.

DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG

We're involved right now in some very significant legal battles and it would be the wrong thing for me to do to step out in the middle of those battles.

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Those who understand the true nature of humanity are always loners.

Don’t see the mind for more than it is, but don’t misread it for all that it can be.

. . when the target of crime is armed, there is more law present, more public policy present, and more public interest served than by all 20,000 gun laws in force.

Take my wife... please. I'm not saying she's ugly, but when she went to see a horror film, the audience thought she was making a personal appearance.

No one must use the name of God to commit violence. To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman.