I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

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.

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.

Why, you love him! Your fear, your terror, all of that is just love and love of the most exquisite kind, the kind which people do not admit even to themselves.

The best way to keep young is to keep going in whatever it is that keeps you going. With me that's work, and a lot of it. And when a job is finished, relax and have fun.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

Like any big company, they've got a brand name, and they've got to keep extending it. Because the reality is, there's not a whole lot of difference between their search (engine) and anyone else's.

It just is what it is. It's not always fair.

Sometimes I do wake up in the mornings and feel like I've just had the most incredible dream. I've just dreamt my life

Why can't you place a blessing like that on us?" I asked. "It only works on wild animals." "So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned. "Hey!" I protested.

Shakespeare knew the human mind, and its most minute and intimate workings, and he never introduces a word, or a thought, in vain or out of place; if we do not understand him, it is our own fault.