My family is really, really Southern - I had two uncle Bubbas, and grandparents that we called Big Mama and Big Daddy.

There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

I'm a morning person, which is a hideous thing to be. No one likes morning people, not even other morning people.

Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food prepared by a cook who doesn't eat.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.

Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on.

I think of birth as the search for a larger apartment.

I think one of the things about parents and children is there are the accidents of temperament. There's no guarantee that just because you are related you'll have anything in common.

Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.

Emotionally, I was affected a lot by Rage Against the Machine, not specifically the literal intention of the words or what it was about, but the feel, the sound, those phrases that got me.

What I do is me, for that I came.

I never forget those who do me a favor, and I never forget those who don't!

I don't earn my money from trying to hurt people or get in the tabloids.

In spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.

I like to keep a uniform - wear a blazer, try to keep the same colour pants; very tailored, very fitted but still edgy.

You can sit next to somebody on the underground, and you can look at them quite intensely, but you can never, ever know what they're wearing under their clothes.