I don't think anyone will believe me, but I've never been pressured by a publisher to churn out a book.

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.

A look of interest, or perhaps doubt, came across his face. "Well, " he said, "I'm sure your bulimia was fulfilling some need.

If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive." -Mother Teresa

If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.

Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.

The desire for perfect release and the real-world impossibility of perfect, whenever-you-want-it release had together produced a tension they could no longer stand.

Since only what is material is perceptible, knowable, nothing is known of the existence of God.

We have this saying, Christy and I. We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day.

I can't be a legend yet. I'm not dead.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

It's all connected. When you save any part of the world, you've saved the whole world. In fact, that's the only way it can be done.