I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

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.

Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure

if you could feel what i feel then maybe you'd understand

Real friendship is shown in times of trouble prosperity is full of friends.

For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

My curves are not crazy.

Unicorn. Old French, unicorne. Latin, unicornis. Literally, one-horned: unus, one and cornu,a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn.

To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul.

I thought about all the people that told me I couldn't do it and told me I couldn't get there.

It has been hard, I know, my daughters, but one word alone wipes out all of the hardships: love.