My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.

Most beautiful, good things were done by women people scorn.

I've always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.

I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs.

It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.

I think mystery writers and thriller writers - whatever genre you want to call it - are taking on some of the biggest, most interesting kind of socioeconomic issues around in a really interesting, compelling way.

I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one - like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.