Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.