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.

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.

Any writer would rather dig into character than dig into fancy plots.

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.

Those aren't doors, and they're not opening. Those are crypts, Richie. They're cracking open and the vampires you thought were dead are all flying out again.

Many atrocities, have been done in the name of the greater good.

Y are you called the cheese man?

Laurels grow in the Bay of Biscay, I hope a bed of them may be found in the Mediterranean.

How can I dispose of myself with it?

History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.

It's hard to be objective about your own work.

I don't like to hear woman argue...it makes my balls itch.

Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong. (To Richard Nixon, on the Vietnam War)