Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.

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.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

I think that people all grow up and have their same personalities, but you can say, "Oh, I can see the roots of this personality, which I didn't like, but then you grew up, and I can still see you as that person, but I do really like you now." Which is sort of how I feel about children - I mean, about children who I knew when I was a child and grew up with, and they're still my friends, and children that I know as children who I see growing up, and every year I like them more.