I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts.'

Using adverbs is a mortal sin.

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.

Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.

I used to be able to write five pages a day, every day, no problem. Now a good day is five or four pages, and that's from 9:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.

Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

I always felt, you don’t have a good time doin crime, you may as well find a job.