My older son who is, I think, here tonight, is forty-one years old. Which is odd because so am I.

You'd be naive if you think you are going to retain any control once you option a character to TV.

The biggest risk with a series that goes on this long is that you'll get bored with the character.

If you don't make the best-seller list, if you don't get shortlisted for any prizes, it's goodbye.

It was a clear, starry night, dead calm. Whenever I see a sky like that, I wish I could write music

It’s only when we can work with something that brings out our strengths that we’re of any real use.

Each person searches for the most beautiful jump which will be the final before leaving this world.

He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.

Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

I wouldn't want to assume that all men are like you. If I did, I know I would give them up entirely

A man who thinks he has a higher purpose can do terrible things, even to those he professes to love.

I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.

Tory a father isn’t supposed to fear his fourteen-year-old daughter. That being sad, you terrify me.

If it's really beautiful weather, sometimes I might take a helicopter out. I got my license in 1999.

The condition of rage is one in which I find myself starting my day - once I see the news headlines.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

Botox not only helps with wrinkles, it actually makes you feel more relaxed as frowning causes tension.

Being with someone who is smart and gives good advice adds tremendously wonderful elements to your life.

Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

Night fell clean and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air.

The contemporary crime novel is, at its best, a novel of character. That's where the suspense comes from.

I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important.

With DNA, the ability to find out a lot more with a lot less has increased our ability for identification.

Well, you give me too much credit for foresight and planning. I haven't got a clue what the hell I'm doing.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

Im studying jerkoffs in the wild," Ben answered dryly. "This seemed like a good chance to view one up close.

But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.

Even when I am writing I usually take a break around lunchtime and go for a little walk to clear out my head.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they've got to say.

There can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself.

I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.

We used to send whole flocks of birds shooting out of our mouths and never managed to grab them by their wings.

I wrote 'Knots and Crosses,' the first of the Rebus books, not even realising that I was writing crime fiction.

People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story.

In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time.

And life changes. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot. And at some point, it just isn't worth the fight to fix it.

I know paradise has many gates, just as hell does. One has to learn to distinguish between them, or one is lost.

I see you, Ben. I always have. You're in my pack." He pulled away. "What if being packmates isn't enough for me?

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them.

Walking by water frees your creativity. I don't know how it works - there's something about it that's liberating.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.

Africa was the most exotic place I could conceive of - the end of the world - and I knew I would go there one day.

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

Bones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.

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