"War gives men a plain-and-simple something to do ... Women write diaries in the hope that their words will beckon fate." It's a romantic manifesto.

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.

Tomorrow is the day that I finally get to chase my future. Tomorrow is the day that I make her mine again and this time, I won't ever let her push me away.

Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way.

The sustaining of life, in a bodily sense as well as in the sense of psychological health, is inherently subject to risk.

People often argue about this. Obviously one of the skills in performance is acting, and you can't expect every Romeo to really be in love with their Juliet!

Well my taste wasn't very good when I first started out. But later, when I began to appreciate the art of acting, I would say the actress I most admire is Vanessa Redgrave.

Losing me will hurt; it will be the kind of pain that won't feel real at first, and when it does, it will take her breath away.

Whatever you condemn, you have done yourself.

I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.

Nothing good was ever learned from eavesdropping, so mind your business and let others mind theirs.

I'm going to kill them all