Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next Gone With the Wind.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

[On men:] ... you never know what they're like until you get them home and take them out of their packages.

A lot of men just don't read. They don't read fiction at all.

People just make stupid mistakes. And they keep making them and keep making them, and suddenly they can't dig themselves out.

I don't understand people who say they're bored. Look out your window.

I'm not somebody who believes in evil.