I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.

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.

Success is meaningless without fulfilment - both begin within

It was a black and white only computer at the time, but it kept me fascinated.

Africa is cruel...it takes your heart and grinds it into powdered stone - and no-one minds

It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

For who that noght dar undertake, Be riht he schal no profit take [For who that dare not undertake, By right he shall no profit take. i.e., Nothing ventured, nothing gained.]

We travel the world, and our right to free speech is precious.

Life isn't all haha hehe.

As you can imagine this is a very emotional moment for me because Dave promised me many times that I was the only woman he would ever cheat on.

I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colours I am going to use.

I just have fun doing what I do. If it looks like a good time, I'm up for it!