Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

I always cringe when a male friend of mine, who's very fixated on women, puts "compatibility" at the top of his list of attributes that he would be looking for in a woman. I would replace compatibility with dialectic.

Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber pieces, and that's my enrichment.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.

I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.

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!!!!!!!!!!