I write because I write - as anyone in the arts does. You're a painter because you feel you have no choice but to paint. You're a writer because this is what you do.

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.

If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing.

I don't write police stories, per se, but I usually write about areas that are very panoramic, like Harlem, or the Lower East Side, or a small urban city like Jersey City.

I don't need all that much - I just need to know who my characters are and what kind of jam they're going to get into, and I'll write myself out of their jam.

The first thing to look out for after your first big success are drugs and screenplays.

Writers spend three years rearranging 26 letters of the alphabet. It's enough to make you lose your mind day by day

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

I write because I can't imagine not writing.

You can't take a character anywhere they don't expect the character to go. But within those confines is where creativity lies

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.

The feel of the sticky wetness down there when she moved made her grimace. God, she wanted to get cleaned up. In a hurry.

The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.

Rise above oneself and grasp the world.

Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer.

Romney-Ryan is likely the best matched 'team' that has been on a national ticket in a very long time.

It's my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury." (Jace)

And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.

They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.

Men are not only women's unpaid bodyguards, they actually pay to be a woman's bodyguard.