In a daydream sort of way, I think it would be pretty cool to direct a movie. But I have been on movie and TV sets and know it is hard work. I like directing it in my mind. It is easier.

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.

Set off on a quest to find someone who has read a book or many books and remains the same, and I can tell you with all certainty there is no one you will see.

The needle of our conscience is as good a compass as any.

From now on, the technology companies that succeed will be those that have developed skills at listening and a sophisticated understanding of their customers' industries.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy.

I'm just trying to be part of the movement that decentralizes and hopefully creates peace. By supporting smaller, democratic structures, you can effect change.

Why do we need another station where everyone has a gun? We already have BET.

Sensuality is the death of the soul.

Standardization, instead of individualization. Cheap books, instead of private press editions. Active literature, instead of passive leather bindings.

For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you.