I would prefer things to be peaceful and not have conflict.

Alcoholism, tobacco, drunk driving, these things will always be with us. There's always going to be a certain percentage of any population that is addicted to certain substances.

Bookstores never seem to know where to put me on the shelves. But I do. I love my genre and I love those writers, so I am happy to be considered a crime writer. That's what I consider myself.

I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.

I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

It's important to me that the reader goes on a ride with the characters, that you set context enough to know, "Okay, here's where we are in the world. Now we're just going to go inside this person's head, this guy's heart, this woman's ambitions and take it down to very, very small scale."

I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.