Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.

In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

I know where I come from, but what I want to know is, where am I going?

I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't know, because I won't ever dare ask that question.

During a very busy life I have often been asked "How did you manage to it all?" The answer is very simple: it is because I did everything promptly.

I used a Luma crane, a wounderful device; it makes the camera able to go anywhere. It was also used on Friday the 13th Part 3.

You know, the history of California art doesn't start until about 1961, and that's when these photographs start. I mean, we have no history out here.

The human mind has claimed for water one of its highest values-the value of purity.

The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.

We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.

Considering the alternative. . . it's not too bad at all.

The body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn which is to be left behind when one perceives that one is a burden to the host.