No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And—like it or not—I still think about her every single day.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

Summer romances cometo an end. That was part of the deal. They are built like certain plants or insects, not able to survive more than one season. I thought we would be different. We were, I guess, but not in the way I thought. I truly believed that we would never let each other go. The young are so dumb.

I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time. I don't do too many notes. I keep it mostly in my head. I usually start writing a new book around January, and it's due October 1.

Sometimes even when the book is over I dont know whos good and whos bad. Its really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

I still try to make the "next" book my "best" book. I want to grip and move you in unexpected ways.