I wanted things. Whatever it cost and whatever it took, I would do it. And that's it.

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

Tell me anything. Tell me everything. Revoke our time apart. Love me fierce in danger.

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I learn things late-and only the hard way.

Your life must be planned in such a way that you could get to a stage when you can say every day of your life is being converted to a product.

There must be a secret hidden in this book or else you wouldn't bother to read it

...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?

Achievement is the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

Work banishes those three great evils boredom vice and poverty.

It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.

Life's up and down from the time you get here to the time you leave.

It is not difficult to rebuild a life. All we need is to be aware that we have the same strength we had before, and to use it in our favor.

Women with whiskers... its a bummer.