I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.

In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

Journalism is a Darwinian process.

Geoffrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then.

The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.

Why mundanes always insist on taking responsibility for things that aren't their fault is a mystery to me. You didn't force that cocktail down his idiotic throat." -Jace, pg.241-

The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.

I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact I work only under duress.

The civilized world has a common stake in defeating the terrorists.

It was really cool being out on the road and doing school with my tutor over Skype or on the phone, but it can definitely be difficult.

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded.

I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.