I never miss L.A. because I'm there enough.

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.

Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.

Acceptance of ignorance (of reality) is the true knowledge path.

Then, as now, there were always girls who were overlooked and ignored by gentlemen who really should have known better.

Saying both sides participated in violence doesn't mean both sides are equally ideologically wrong, you know.

Well, I’ve been in several films including documentaries, but the big blockbuster, I was hired as advisor to the actors, I was trying to make Jesuits out of them.

Everyone has something that defines them, whether they're wildly intelligent or whether they have really big feet.

I'm trying to take pictures of less and less.

The adjective 'decent' and the noun 'government' have seldom come together in the human history!

If you have a dishonest moment, you're going to lose the audience. So I had to not only light myself in the scenes.

You get in a lot of trouble when you start putting fictitious numbers.