If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.

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.

God is found in the collection of Many. . . rather than in the One.

Nor is the limitation of what is sayable a limit to the doable: this last is the possibility of literature.

You have to get angry in the face of bad situations. It's the most effective way to escape the bridles of despair.

Three cheers for war, noble and beautiful above all.

When you're making a purchasing decision around an appliance or a car or a home, that's when to take the environment into mind, but don't dwell so much on paper versus plastic.

Nobody really knows what the market is going to do, but it sure looks like we are going to have a lot more volatility.

Uh I like it like that She working that back, I don't know how to act

I've never dreamed of a story idea. I have such boring dreams.

Lead the least secretive life you can.

I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility.