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.

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.

I like to see writers reach bigger and bigger audiences, and stand-alones have allowed some of them to do just that.

Love is a better way.

I think I'll name her Amber - for the colour of her father's eyes.

You try to take it game-to-game and keep working.

[On Nijinksy:] Ah, he took my breath away! The body that man had, the controlled power, the iron fragility. He was a note of music. He was dance!

Why is everybody afraid of going to Heaven? You want to be here with the smog and the sin and bad people and the war? Or do you want to be in Heaven, sitting next to Jesus, you know?

It's disgraceful that year after year, Congress has bowed to the tobacco lobby and refused to act.

I don't wear a wig. I'd feel terrible onstage with a wig. I hate to be so 'Actors Studio'-ish, but I like to feel it's me out there.

My fascination is not for cinema; it's for human nature and human beings because I find it quite difficult being one at times.

The more opera is dead, the more it flourishes.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.