I've learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

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.

Self-discipline, self-realization and self-reliance.

Trust is hard to gain, but it is even harder to regain once lost.

Without love everything can be nothing. Does that make me want to love? No. For me, Ignorance is still better than martyrdom.

Only yourself can critizice your ideas for you are the only one who knows where are they coming from and how they were born.

I'm not the girl that sits at home on a Saturday night plaiting her girlfriend's hair, drinking tea and watching romantic comedies.

Earlier today I shot my old partner, a friend of mine, because he tried to stop me from doing what I have to do. Don't think for a second that I won't do that to you.

I'll go for God, country, and my baby. Sure, as these teardrops burn, I promise to return, and when I'm home, I'll cling to the arms of my baby.

We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.

But I don't want to sing everything out of the side of my mouth, I want people to understand what I mean.

My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.