If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.

I don't really do anything with the Internet except check my email. I have a much higher opinion of humanity because of that.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

I certainly have written a lot about police in my life, and it's not only something that I know about, but always something that interests me.

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.