blue eyes so light that it looked like she sent them out to be bleached

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.

The will of God is good, acceptable and perfect

Their heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.

The mind's best trick is the illusion that it exists.

You need to get up in the morning and say, 'Boy, I'm going to - in my own stupid way - save the world today.'

When you like something and you're pretty good at it and you can make a living doing it, you don't ask why. You just count your blessings and go with it.

My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!

I wanted it to be kind of dreamy and 1920s, when everything is soft-focus.

The most important thing in a man is not what he knows, but what he is.

The true test of courage is to be afraid and to go ahead and do it anyway - to be scared, is to have your knees knocking, but to walk on in there anyway.

Rest you fair, good signior; Your worship was the last man in our mouths.