The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.

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.

An airport is a potent place, a point of reunions and departures. For the traveler, it's a crossroads at the moment of decision, a flashpoint that separates intention from retreat.

Do what is right not what is convenient.

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.

I realized that the story of even so small a place can never be completely told and can never be finished. It is eternal, always here and now, and going on forever.

Miracles don't just happen on their own you know, you got to make them happen.

To fall in love is a legendry action that doesn't need any explanation.

The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

You guys have so much energy. I threw a party in Toronto and there were, like, 4,000 people who couldn't get in.

Sometimes I'll work through the crossword sections of three separate papers.

I don't see myself as an artist. I work with artists and collaborate with them, but then it becomes graphic design. It's not an art. I'm a graphic designer.