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 am sure every writer has this and probably every newscaster, that people are always coming up to me and saying, my daughter wants to do what you do, my godson, my tennis partner.

This is my job, my livelihood: the health and the well-being of the publishing industry. We're all responsible for this.

The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

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.

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

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