Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!

The 250-page outline for American Tabloid. The books are so dense. They're so complex, you cannot write like I write off the top of your head. It's the combination of that meticulousness and the power of the prose and, I think, the depth of the characterizations and the risks that I've taken with language that give the books their clout. And that's where I get pissed off at a lot of my younger readers.

I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.