I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.

Drafting is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.The closer you get to the end, the more you start to worry about the beginning.

...I don't have concrete plans for the future. I just think of success and keep a successful attitude. Success is 99 percent preparation. If you set yourself up for winning, rarely will you fail.

There are people who can achieve huge success in life, while adding a bit of fun and a splash of colour to this increasingly grey world.

I think the police are a major part of the glue that holds civilised life together. They're not highly paid.

Brighton is a beautiful seaside city, but it's got a dark underbelly.

I travel abroad constantly on book promotion and research, and the Internet is invaluable to me for accessing U.K. news in places such as America, which most of the time hasn't heard of England.

The biggest qualification to be a good police officer is to have a high degree of emotional intelligence.

Death is just nature's way of making room for the less experienced.

I think that Brighton, for a crime writer, is almost like a character.

If you talk to any cop, however hardened, and say, "Has anything that's ever bothered you", they'll tell you about the death of a child that they had to deal with.

It is more important to understand the ground of your own behavior than to understand the motives of another.

Be kind to all beings, this is more meritorious than bathing at the sixty-eight sacred shrines of pilgrimage and donating money.

To know one's self, one must go all the way to horror.

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

Good, old-fashioned ways keep hearts sweet, heads sane, hands busy.

I have a huge issue with blackface.

I know what it's like to have my heart broken. It is not adorable.

Every goal is a highlight film.

When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.

Everyone's life is a train wreck. Your life happens to be a high-class train wreck.