I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

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.

Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.

[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. ... We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.

Happiness is not found, it is created. Happiness does not depend on all that we lack, but on the way in which we use all that we have

Why are the ones who are too good to be true always being true to someone else?

As you get older, you recognize the erotic nature of the vampire and the idea of the undead.

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy.

Happiness, you'll find, is the greatest magnet in the world.

Buildings should not look like Lady Gaga.

I found the Divine within my Heart.

The past is stronger than my will to forgive forgive you, or myself, I don't know.