The characters I write about are very internal.

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.

She'd been fed anti-consumerist bullshit by her parents but didn't understand simple economics.

If we walk far enough, " says Dorothy, "we shall sometime come to someplace.

He is rich that is satisfied.

We have a very real God with a very real presence.

Our souls are knit. We are one person, James.

Time is passing, ... We have to look at the reality of the situation and ... redouble our efforts and get on with it.

I think there’s no question but what the tail end of the Bush administration, Bush-Cheney administration, that we took steps specifically geared to try and free up the financial sector.

Familiarity seems to breed contempt

Love is the highest form of intelligence we can experience.

Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'