Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

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.

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but absence also dulls the memory and then we tend to forget who we were missing in the first place.

There's maybe nothing nicer than somebody just coming straight out and showing you they like you.

In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

Dead Witch Walking is basically a modern-day witch living in Cincinnati.

I am the signet which marks the page where the revolution has been stopped; but when I die it will turn the page and resume its course.

When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

You could never in a million years have told me Prince would not be here today.

You can stay the same person you've always been even if everything around you changes.