Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell.

If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning." Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said.

What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.

The trouble with real life is, there's no reset button.

New York doesn't exactly have neighborhoods, the way most cities do. What it has is closer to distinct and separate villages, some of them existing on different continents, some of them existing in different centuries, and many of them at war with one another. English is not the primary language in many of these villages, but the Roman alphabet does still have a slight edge.