Can't complain because nobody listens.

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.

People who pressure you usually deserve a “no". People who are patient with you usually deserve a “yes".

Do you remember the long orphanage of the train stationsWe crossed cities that turn-tabled all dayAnd vomited at night the sunshine of the day ("The Voyager")

Take me disappearing, through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time.

Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster.

You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. Its logic-based creativity.

As long as you don't stop producing guns, you can't be a decent country!

Catching flies is better training than hitting the speed bag

Is anything accidental?

A million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe.

We have outlived this embryo, this human cradle, and now it's time to be up and about the great business of becoming citizens of the galaxy and at home with our own heart.