You're grounded!!!! You can't go out and prowl the L.A. streets. You've got to do something more edifying, emboldening and altogether more groovy. You gots to stay home tonite and read a good book!!!!!!!!!!

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.

Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.

Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been right in front of them. A traffic ticket in Brooklyn is how they got ["Son of Sam" serial killer] David Berkowitz. You've just got to look.

I wanted things. Whatever it cost and whatever it took, I would do it. And that's it.