How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.

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.

Home is where the backpack is

What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam.

I never get bored of a workout, because I feel great after a session.

I hope in the end there will be a solution for the world, because we have advanced in so many ways, and still the world has so many different problems.

Ultimately it is by harnessing the natural economic forces which drive society that the pollution tax offers us an opportunity to exert greater control over our environment.

Cartoonists are untrained artists, while illustrators are more trained.

Like, this is my baby. This isn't America's baby.

I've always been a religious guy, but not overly religious. I've always believed in God and Jesus. I pray.

If you're doing what you love, then that's what matters. I am happy, and I am happy where I am. If things go downhill, then I move on to the next, and that's what makes me happy.

The word is a label and I don't like it at all.